Christmas for the Ages
by chezchuckles
Summary: A new Christmas advent/ure. The idea is that each AU gets a chance to tell its Christmas story. I'll mark the chapter with the AU in which it is appearing so that you'll know what universe we're in, and if the story requires more than one chapter, then it will be labeled: Ultimatum - Chapter 1, Ultimatum - Final Chapter, etc. A new chapter every day of December thru Xmas Day.
1. Ultimatum - Chapter One

**Christmas for the Ages**

* * *

 **A/N:** Happy Holidays!

Thanks for coming along with me on a new Christmas advent/ure. The idea is that each AU gets a chance to tell its Christmas story. I'll mark the chapter with the AU in which it is appearing so that you'll know what universe we're in, and if the story requires more than one chapter, then it will be labeled: **Ultimatum - Chapter 1, Ultimatum - Final Chapter** , etc. I plan on posting one every day of December through Christmas Day.

I wish you hope. I pray for peace.

* * *

x

 **Ultimatum - Chapter One**

A universe in which Rick Castle's wife, Kate Beckett, was captured by the Dragon (a Senator) and his cohort (the Chief of Detectives) in exchange for an incriminating file. Castle raced against the clock to save her life - and the life of their unborn child.

This is one of their future Christmases.

x

* * *

Kate grips the little girl's hand, keeps Elle close to her side as the court room doors creak open and the crowd spills out.

"Where's my daddy?" Elle says, up on her toes in the sudden current of people. "Daddy!"

Kate chuckles, squeezing Elle's hand. "Hang on. Give him a chance."

"No, _now_. Daddy!"

No way she releases the girl's hand, not with Elle's tendency to run, but she knocks her knuckles into the three year old's cheek. Almost four. Soon. Elle gives her a flashing scowl for that, but she stops calling for her father and waits with a little more patience.

Castle fights the crowd and happens upon them at the same moment that Elle catches sight of him. "Ellie-bell," he cries, swooping in to scoop her up in a big hug. Kisses to her cheeks and chin and neck, growling and snuffling until Elle giggles and flings herself back.

Because Castle has her and because Kate is _done_ with having her, Kate lets go entirely and steps into her husband, her lips finding whatever is left of him that can be hers. "Hey, babe. How'd it go?"

He nods, a quick confirmation that his testimony was well-received and there weren't any surprises. Of course they knew the defense attorney was going to attack his reputation, bringing in the reports from the vehicular homicide scene at the bridge.

"It was exactly like we thought," he tells her, and now she gets a kiss of her own. Mouth to mouth, Rick breathing her in, Kate suffusing him with what confidence she can project. He does look a little better when he pulls back.

"Daddy, did you slay the dragon?"

"Did some of it, Ellie," he promises, squeezing her in his arms. "Mommy did the lion's share."

"Roar," Elle says, a little self-satisfied twitch of her lips.

Kate's days of testimony are well behind them, mostly because her information was the solid foundation of the whole case against the Senator. Elle and Rick were forced to entertain themselves for weeks while she went over her deposition with the prosecutor, and then she was recalled to the witness stand time and again.

This is the last of it. The Chief of Detectives was prosecuted and sentenced last week, and only the senator remains.

"Daddy, Daddy, it's time for special Christmas."

"Special Christmas," Castle grins, shifting Elle higher in his arms so he can reach a hand for Kate. She takes it, their fingers lace. "I don't know anything about this special Christmas you speak of."

"No!" Elle gasps. "You _both_ promised. Mommy said-" She narrows her eyes. "You're kidding, Daddy."

Rick chuckles, kissing Elle's suspicious face. "I'm kidding, Ellie. It's too fun to tease when you're so excited."

"Not fun at _all_ ," Elle huffs, but she doesn't squirm to get down. The halls are still crowded, and she likes being high enough to see, to not be trampled by adults like walking trees.

Kate squeezes her husband's hand and they turn for the stairs, heading down the marble hall, threading their way through the late afternoon court crush. Together, always together, since the beginning of this mess when they struck a deal to let it go for their own safety.

But this case just wouldn't allow them to let it go. And now Kate is finally seeing an end to the injustice of her mother's death.

That feels enough like a Christmas special.

"Come on, Kate, pick up your feet," Castle calls back, tugging on her hand.

She tears her eyes from the courtroom's open doors, because the senator will never walk through them again. He will - from now on and always - come and go under guard.

He'll lose his freedom and his fiefdom for what he did.

And Kate gets all this.

* * *

The three of them walk the long expanse of Central Park with the sun so far set that the horizon is wrapped in a blue-green blanket. The Meadow is closed in December, but Elle trails her fingers along the chain link fence, peering through as they meander the pathway alongside. As usual, Elle talks to the nonexistent sheep under her breath, calling her imaginary animals by name, tugged along only by Castle's voice _keep up, little shepherdess._

He watches her closely, since this game is his own fault, creating the world for her this summer when they were trying to make the long hot days evaporate while Kate worked with the DA on the Chief of D's and the Senator's prosecution cases.

"No time for sheep tonight," Kate calls back softly. "Come along, elephant." She holds her hand out for Elle, coaxing in that tender voice that the girl responds to. She's like Rick that way - Kate's attention, full and rich, is enough to captivate them both.

"Good girl," Castle murmurs, ruffling his daughter's hair as she flies past him and takes Kate's hand. It might have been a mistake to walk, but Kate said they've ben cooped up all day and need the exercise, run off Elle's energy.

"Say, _come on Daddy_."

Elle sparkles as she turns back to him, her hand firmly in her mother's. "Come on, Daddy. You hurry up. Maybe carousel?"

"Not tonight," he breaks it to her. "Christmas special, remember?"

"Ooh, yes," she squeals, skipping ahead. Brought up short by Kate's hand. "Come _on_ , Mommy. You hurry up too."

"Enjoy the lights, you little skunk." But Kate turns to look at him, eyebrows lifting as if to say _come on then, Daddy._

He's having trouble walking it off.

 _He killed a man on that bridge._

But he picks up the pace to follow his girls down the path towards the 65th St Transverse, appreciating the pretty multi-colored lights in the trees. Trying to anyway, trying to lift his spirits for their sake.

He has always enjoyed the way New York City comes together for the holidays, how the usual randoms and weirdos and crazies (as Esposito might call them) turn out in Santa hats and strings of winking lights and Nutcracker coats. The things that always make Central Park scary to his daughter at night, those things are still here, but they have a sheen of delight and almost wonder during this time of year. The world _isn't_ a better place, but there's this sense that it can be. It might yet still be, if they can all hang on to this feeling.

If they can just hang on.

Kate plucks his hand from his coat pocket, a look on her face that says she understands all too well. _I see what you're doing_. He gives her a weak smile in return, wishes faintly they hadn't decided to do this today. After his testimony in court. After he had to explain why he smeared a living breathing human being on the front grill of his truck.

"For Elle," Kate murmurs, the three of them linked hand to hand now across the path. The carousel is in view, and their daughter isn't paying attention to the quiet conversation her parents are having.

"I know," he answers. "I'm working on it."

"You're preoccupied. You're not here."

"I'm trying, Kate."

"Stop trying," she insists. "Be here. Not on that bridge. Not in the subway tunnel where you found me. Found us."

He shivers at that, and her hand squeezes around his. He's never been able to do what she does - box it up in neat containers and close herself off from it. He wishes he could. "I killed a man," he says, unable to make it work. "Not just that, but while he was dying, I turned the screws-"

"He was going to kill you," she snaps. "He was going to kill me. And her. The second he came back with that file you had. So you don't get to do this. Not now."

"When am I supposed to do it then?"

"Never."

He sighs, but the release of trapped air from his lungs does nothing to refresh him. He just feels _bad_.

"If you need more therapy, Castle, then _please_ , go back to the therapist. But don't spend every day for the rest of our life hashing it out again and again. It's not helping."

"I tried the therapist," he mutters, defensive now, shamed. Stupid, he's so stupid to bring this up when all she asked was one night for Elle's sake. It's been four and a half years and he can't stop talking about it for one night? "No, you're right. You _are_ right. I'm done. I'm finished. It's our special Christmas. She's nearly four; she'll always remember this. I'm good."

"You're not," she says flatly.

"Then let me pretend. _Help_ me pretend."

He won't look at her face because he knows that was a cheap shot. She's not asking him to pretend; she's asking him to put his own crazy on hold for a night, to wear a Santa hat like all the other weirdos out here and _make it happen_ for their daughter. He can go back to tortured when Elle's in bed.

"Alright," she says finally. "You want help? I'll help you pretend."

His heart clutches at the deadly tone of her voice.

She grips the back of his coat. Her eyes are dark and hard to read in the twinkling white lights. "You want a reason to let this go? To be _with_ us again? I'm pregnant. There's your reason."

* * *

She watches as Rick Castle's whole face transforms.

Changing before her very eyes.

She used the news like a weapon, but joy transmutes his lead into gold, suffusing every element of his body, lighting up. He throws his arms around her and yanks her off her feet, her hand tugged out of Elle's, her breath leaving her.

"Oh God, Kate, really?" The question is barely out of his mouth before he laughs, bright and relieved, a smacking kiss in her ear and her jaw, her neck, her mouth. "A baby, another little baby, oh, baby-"

She laughs and fends off his bubbling ticklish crazy, kicks at his shin to be put down.

He does, and cups her face, kisses her hard, only a little frustration in it for the how of her telling, but then he lets her go and turns to Ellie. "Come here, my middle-"

"Castle," Kate intervenes, eyebrows lifting emphatically. She's not letting her almost-four year old blab it to the whole park and the world besides.

"Yes, yes, alright," Castle says, still hoisting Elle into his arms and kissing her cheeks until the girl stops protesting the rough treatment and giggles in submission. "Hey, my girl, my baby elephant, are you ready for our Christmas special?"

"Yes, I've _been_ ready," Elle giggles, trying for impudent but fading under her father's attack. "Let's go, let's be faster."

"Yes, come on. We will. Mom's been trying to frog march us anyway, and you and I weren't having it. We've been moody. Are you ready for me to carry you fast like a whirlwind?"

"Yes, puh-lease," Elle sighs, drama in her flair. "Much better to be carried."

"Not for long," Castle murmurs, and Kate hits him for that slip. But he's already bumping against her to get her moving too, and it's for the best.

Columbus Circle will be crowded by now, and she's not sure how long the little elephant will last. Either one. No morning sickness this time, but her energy has been fading fast in the evenings.

Rick never even noticed. But he will now. He'll hover and cajole and tend and hen, all the time, and she'll snap at him and grow irritated and stop telling him things just to get him to back off, like he did last time.

Only this time, this time, it will be normal. Everything will be normal. No one is getting kidnapped.

Dragons are only for fairy tales they'll tell their children.


	2. Ultimatum - Final Chapter

**Ultimatum - Final Chapter**

* * *

Columbus Circle is filled with white tented booths and strung with white Christmas lights along the walkways. They buy cider and hot chocolate for the little one, first thing, to prevent her whining for other sweets, and they let Elle go ahead of them down the path so she can come upon each delight as if it were her own discovery. She's too needy to wander off, too much with them to get lost in her own head.

Not that Kate doesn't pay strict and sometimes almost paranoid attention to exactly where her daughter is. Repercussions, ripples in their pond from that one stone, so many years ago, her mother's murder.

But the petting zoo is just as she remembers it from last year, though clearly Elle doesn't. She runs right up to the ropes and marvels, bouncing on her toes as she sees the reindeer and baby goats and the huge tortoise in his warmed box. "Mommy, Mommy-"

"I see."

"Goats!"

Forget the reindeer, this girl loves goats.

Castle is chuckling as he pays for their tickets, and they take Ellie by the hand to move through the roped-off line. The reindeer will be last, it seems, but Elle coos over the baby goats the moment they come close, feeding them from her hand the pellets Castle has bought.

The goats love her back. One of the handlers allows their group of about six to wander inside the goat pen with their sweaty fists of pellets, and the parents hang back near the gate to watch and take pictures on their phones. Castle too, of course; he can't seem to stop grinning like a fool. Elle is on her knees, her white tights pricked with hay, petting a black baby goat with one hand while the animal scarfs pellets out of her palm. Even when she has no more food, the baby stays right with her, bumping into her shoulder and rubbing his face against hers like a cat.

Castle caves and goes to the center kiosk for a bigger bag of pellets, while Kate just shakes her head at him. At least with a second they'll have to stop spoiling Elle; less of this constant attention will be a good thing. She'll be forced to share.

When Ellie gets the second bag, she throws her arms around Castle's neck and squeals her gratefulness in his ear - which Kate can hear all the way to the gate. It's hard to say no to a kid who is so thoroughly kind, inside and out, to everyone she meets. In fact, as Castle turns to head back for the gate, Kate sees Ellie offer up the bag to a boy a few years older than her who is standing wistfully to one side. The boy takes a handful and beams at her, his two front teeth missing, and speaks in a language Kate doesn't recognize.

But that doesn't seem to stop Elle. She carries on a conversation with the boy and goat both, and Kate nudges Castle to turn and look when he approaches the gate.

His pride as he watches their daughter share is more humble than Kate would expect. She takes him by the elbow and leans into him, slides her hand down to tangle their fingers. "You okay? The court room really took it out of you, huh."

"Yeah." He has a death grip on her fingers. "I had to relive... explain to the jury that you were pregnant with that bright little thing, how constantly terrified I was that I'd be too late. How I kept... imagining I'd save you only to lose her. Or worse, lose you both."

Kate lets out a rough breath, knocks her chin into his shoulder turning into him. "You didn't though. Lose her. Or me. We didn't lose this. You weren't too late."

"I killed a man to be certain of that, of this," he says quietly. His eyes find hers, and she's momentarily troubled by how calm his are. And then she realizes he's forcing himself to find peace - for their sake, for the sake of their family now. "I did that, and I won't ask myself hypothetical questions about would I do it again, should I have just driven off, no. It's done. And we have our baby elephant-"

"Not such a baby anymore," she chides, smiling. "Almost four."

"In January," he sighs. His eyes are clear, his face set into those lines of happiness. "If you can see your way clear of January to celebrate birthdays with our girl, I can put that day on the bridge behind me as well. Celebrate what we have."

"Good," she breathes, almost too much to hope for. "Just like that?"

"Yes."

"Okay," she says, a promise to believe him. And to send him back to the therapist.

"Mommy!" Elle calls out, running up to squirm between them. Kate looks down and finds that upturned face, the curiously brimming green eyes. "Mommy, can we have a baby goat?"

"No, honey, there's no room in our loft for a goat," she says, smoothing down Elle's hair. "But you can love on the baby goats here and-"

"No, I mean _in your tummy_." Elle puts her ear to Kate's stomach and clutches at her. "I can hear him! He's going ba-ba-ba!"

"That's a sheep," Castle corrects.

"I don't want a dumb _lamb."_

"We're not having a sheep!" Kate laughs. "And anyway who says we're having anything at all?"

"Daddy did. He said a baby. Can't it be a baby goat? I want a baby goat, puh-lease?"

"Oh my God," she mutters, shaking her head.

"Please, just a little one like Humphrey over there, please, he doesn't even have to be black though I like the black ones best-"

"Castle, I'm gonna kill you."

But Rick is laughing as he bends down and scoops up their daughter, wrestling her into a hold against his chest. "No baby goats, that's not what human beings have babies of."

"What do they have? I don't want a sheep-"

"No, silly girl, they have baby humans," Castle explains, chuckling as he shifts her onto one arm. "Mommy is going to have a baby human."

Elle's nose wrinkles and she inspects Kate like she's a putrid dead fish. "Ew. Mommy. Why would you do that?"

"Dad did that," she deadpans.

"Daddy," Elle scolds, crossing her arms. "It better not be a baby _girl_. There are too many already."

"Ah, jealous of Alexis again," Castle hums, kissing her cheeks. "You know you love your sister. Even if she's in Paris living your dream."

"She's in _Greece_ right now," Elle scoffs. "And she has baby goats _all over the place._ "

Kate laughs, unable to help it, and threads her arm through Castle's. She tugs down Elle's sweater. "We'll have to go visit Alexis in Greece so that you can have some quality time with the goats before this baby comes. How about that?"

"Deal," Elle says heartily. And squirms to get back to the goats.

"Hey," Castle calls after her, "what about the reindeer?"

"Bor-ing," Elle calls back. "They don't fly. They're not magic; they're just ordinary dumb reindeer."

"Hey, whoa, yes they do. They're-"

"Daddy," she says in a huff, putting her hands on her hips and turning back to deal with him. "Shh, there are littles here. They don't know." She makes an exaggerated gesture to the boy she shared her goat pellets with - a boy clearly double her age - and then she darts away for the baby goats.

"Oh my God, she's you," Castle breathes.

"Hey," she cries, smacking his arm. "She only thinks these aren't _Santa's_ reindeer, you melodramatic idiot. She told me that on the way here. The elves and the reindeer and even the Santa-" She lowers her voice and glances around to be sure the little kids really won't overhear. "She said even their costumed Santa - they're not the real ones. They just play the real ones like Gram does on Broadway-"

Castle snorts. "My mother managed to convince her she's on Broadway, so I suppose she's more gullible than I thought."

Kate chuckles. "I told her they were actors, yes, because it was an honor to play Santa and his elves. And she agreed."

"Oh," he sighs, a hand to his heart. "The magic is safe."

She rubs his back over the coat, willing to go along with his melodrama. He's had a long - well, four years. "Magic is always safe with you, Rick. Even when she figures out about Santa, you'll make sure she believes in magic." She lifts on her toes and kisses his lips. "You always manage it. I don't know how, but the magic is safe with you."

She sees his throat work and his eyes graze her, tender and loving and absolute mush. He cups the side of her face and shakes his head. He starts and stops a dozen different times, then finally clears his throat and says, "How's the goat?"

"What?"

He touches her stomach, trailing sensation between them. "The baby goat." His eyebrows dance. "Everything good? I didn't ask before."

She groans and grabs him by the wrist. "You are _not_ calling it a goat."

"I think I just did."

She narrows her eyes. "Then you are most definitely not _naming_ him after a goat like you did Elle."

"I named her after an elephant, not a goat."

"You know what I mean."

"I bet I could make it work. I wonder what goat is in Greek-"

"If you do, I will cheerfully strangle you in your sleep."

But he's already on his phone looking it up, and she has to admit-

No. No, she's admitting nothing. She's not naming this baby after a goat just because she gets emotional when he nicknames the belly.

"Mega," he laughs. "Oh, Cheever-"

"No," she insists, grabbing the phone out of his hands. "Stick to Christmas special. Go help your daughter hand out the last of her bag of pellets. Do _not_ search for goat names."

"We could just call it lamb, you know separate the goats from the sheep-"

She groans. "Castle," she says, jabbing a finger at him. "Go."

"Oh, _go_. That's close to goat."

She shoves on him and he stumbles away.

He snags his phone from her, eyebrows dancing, comedy in his features. "Didn't mean to get your goat."

She wants to give him the finger, but the truth is she'll take the stupid puns, the snickering. It's been a hard few months, and every good memory they have of their first pregnancy is nuanced by what happened. When Elle came into the world, it was perilously close to Johanna's death day anniversary. Every time she cried, they rushed to hold her, reassure themselves the horror hasn't touch their baby.

They've needed this closure, and their new life - this addition to their family, goat or no - is perfect timing.

And perfect completion.

Near the center kiosk where the handlers are, Castle is trying to lure Elle towards the reindeer, making no-doubt-outrageous promises to pique her interest.

Kate presses a hand to her stomach. "This'll be your world, baby g. See what you can make of it."

 **x**


	3. Banni - Chapter One

**Banni - Chapter One**

* * *

They are turned back to Kuala Lumpur mid-flight, the dip of one wing and the slow circle making her rouse.

"What are we doing?" she says, looking to Castle as if he knows more than she does.

"I don't know. Turning around?"

The lone flight attendant for the first class section comes through once they've banked and leveled again, apologies like a smile etched onto her face. _A volcano_ Kate hears _cloud of smoke_. She sits up straighter, slides one calf against the other as she scrapes the hair out of her face. "Excuse, did you say a volcano?"

"Bali is under an eruption threat from Mount Agung. The airport is closed because of the ash cloud-"

"Is everyone okay?" Castle says, leaning towards her, thick exhaustion in his voice. It's been a long week, a whirlwind since Thanksgiving. Bali was supposed to be their thing, their one-

"They're undergoing evacuation procedures now." She looks like she wants to move on, but Castle stops her again _is there anything-_ "I'm sorry, sir, but we're heading back to Kuala Lumpur. Once we're on the ground, we'll know more."

The flight attendant sidles away from their row and Castle groans, thumping his head back into the seat. "It never ends."

She would laugh but she feels the same; Kate takes his hand and laces their fingers together, visions of baby elephants sliding out of reach. "It's okay, Rick. We'll hang around KL, make it to that restaurant-"

"Dinner in the Sky," he says, coming to life a bit. "It's not really a restaurant, just a table in the air."

She shivers, curving her body to the side to meet his eyes. They both like the thrill of that. "It'll be fun."

"Not as fun as lounging on the beach waiting for our elephant ride."

"We knew there were tremors since September," she reminds him. "You got insurance-"

"It's not the same."

"I know." She was hoping to see that little elephant one more time, Banni, who must by now be almost three years old. She wonders what's happened to him, she hopes-

"It matters," he says, a plaintive note to his voice. "This was important."

"We'll figure it out." She lifts their joined hands to her lips, kisses his knuckles. "All we need is you and me."

"And Dinner in the Sky."

She presses her lips to keep from smiling, but at least his whine is more for her benefit, to make her laugh, rather than self-indulgent now. "And some damn good wine."

He laughs then, squeezes her hand.

They'll be fine. It's been a rough few years, her leaving, the secret investigation, then their shooting and recovery, and they have both put a lot of expectations on this trip. Expectations for their marriage. But they can do the work of reconnecting anywhere.

* * *

He gets sick before they even get on the sky ride, his stomach flipping as they stand in line. He tries to tough it out, but ever since the shooting, nothing is the same for him, he can't trust his body - and evidently she's paying careful attention.

She pulls him out of line with a short shake of her head, guides them away from the heat and the crowd. His shame must show on his face, because she gives him a stern look. Eyes dark. And he knows what she doesn't say.

He doesn't get to feel guilty for his limitations if she doesn't. He's told her, reassured her, time and again that he doesn't care if they can't have kids, he doesn't need to have kids, his grief is only on her behalf - and of course, if his recurring vertigo prevents a stupid dinner ride, then that's so small in comparison.

"We have our lives," she says, fingers tightening on his.

He nods, his throat tightening. Vertigo and nightmares - he can deal. She's alive with him, and he didn't leave her with one more trauma, another loved one failing her in death. "We have our life," he says in return, call and response.

She lets out a breath and nods, and they wander away from the Petronas Towers, sticking within the loop and on a trajectory for their Hilton hotel. He wracks his brain trying to think of something they can do, something befitting their supposed holiday mood. "There are a thousand malls here," he says, gesturing to the glass and chrome structure with its underground parking garage on their left. "We could shop till we drop."

She gives him a reproachful look. "Retail therapy is the _most_ expensive therapy," she chides.

"Money is no object," he mutters. But they've spent a lot on some elective surgeries and those experimental therapies that the insurance wouldn't cover. Shopping is a drop in the bucket, but they've had a lot of buckets so far. "But yeah."

"I don't want to spend our holiday being... superficial," she tells him. "I know you like gadgets and goofy things, and the SkyMall is all yours, Rick. But I was really wanting to - to connect. With the world, with you, with-"

"The universe?" he supplies, lips crooked.

"Yeah," she answers. Her voice is so quiet that he can barely hear her in this crowded urban concrete mess. So quiet the seriousness of it makes his heart thump. She pushes the hair back behind an ear and her eyes trail away from his. "The universe brought us together, time and again. And I guess I'm just-" She shakes her head, and he's horrified to see tears in her eyes. "Looking for that sense of _right._ Or at least something meaningful."

He gets it. He's been feeling it since he woke in a hospital bed half broken and not certain he really survived.

But they did, they have. "I wanted elephants," he mourns.

"If the ash cloud clears and they can fly in..." She shakes her head, carefully. "I don't see it happening any time soon." A stutter in her step. "I think we've asked for more than our fair share of miracles, so if Bali is out, then-"

"I know," he admits, a wince as he sees her. How carefully she walks, holding herself in place, her ribs just right, her abdominal muscles rebuilt after surgeries and therapies. She was shot twice in their own home, himself the once - _it's not a competition, Rick_ \- but her hurt makes him hurt. And that's been an obstacle to their relationship for the year and a half they've spent recovering.

He has to stop feeling guilty. And so does she.

"Hey, let's see where the hour takes us," he says determinedly. "We'll head for the hotel, but if something strikes us, we'll do it. No hesitations, no holding back."

She slides her gaze toward him, a slow smile. "Alright. You have a deal."

* * *

They wander through Central Market because the bright colors and cheerfulness of the vendors initially caught his attention, but neither of them have bought anything. It's not about the money (at least he hopes she's not holding back because of their medical bills), but it seems to be more an unspoken agreement.

Today isn't about things. Things fail, corrode, fall apart. The two of them, their love, doesn't. They persist.

He holds her hand lightly in his own. It's too warm for even that much contact, but that might be another one of their unspoken agreements. Touch when they can, where they can, simple reassurance of breath and blood and life. Her skin is warm, he can't help marvel, a kind of wonder that hums throughout his day. _Her skin is warm_.

On the floor of their kitchen, he felt her hand grow cold in his. Blood seeping out while their bodies went into shock and shut down, icy, stiff.

 _Her skin is warm_ , and he plays with her fingers, piano exercises against the fragile soft inside skin of her palm. Her skin is warm, they're alive, the day is beautiful with bright sun and those thin white clouds barely sliding past the buildings.

"Whoa," he croaks, stopping short as they come to a table with a brilliant red cloth - loaded with daggers. "Look at these. The blades are - wavy?"

"Keris," she says, pointing to a hand-made sign. "Keris dagger. Asymmetrical, blade-patterning alloys." She's naming random terms from the sign, but he reads it himself, fascinated by the gilt-edged intricate designs laid over the wavering blade and the solid wood sheath. It looks like a dragon's fiery breath has half-melted a bad-ass short sword, or like the blade was dipped into the volcano's mouth and pulled out just in time, the metal rippled.

He know better than to be a tourist touching things, especially things that look so special, but he nudges a white placard for the price-

"This one is a thousand dollars," he hisses, turning into her.

"Not US dollars, Castle," she says, a roll of her eyes. "Local currency. And that looks like the most expensive one. Look, this one is much more beautiful, and it's cheaper too."

"It's - okay, I guess that's about two hundred US?" It's rm800, and for a moment he forgot that the spidery print is from a storefront far away from a tourist trap in Chinatown in his home city.

They're in _Malaysia._ He and his wife. Alive. As distant from New York City and its bleak pitfalls of memory and tradition as they can possibly get. "I think these must be ceremonial?"

"Yeah," she answers. She has her phone out, looking it up. "Remind me to donate to wikipedia again when we get home. It's ridiculous how much I've needed it on this trip."

He chuckles, waits for her pronouncement.

"Mm, you'll like this. Kris, or keris, locally known, can be a weapon or a spiritual object, and are considered to possess magical powers. Some good luck, some bad, they act as talismans, or as a sanctified heirloom to bestow on a family certain traits or circumstances. Social status, heroism, all that. Wow."

"Magical powers," he says, and then he does touch it. Because of course he would, especially since it's not the jewel-encrusted one. "It's an art piece. Look at how intricate this is. Looks like a story is being played out all along the blade. Wow."

"Unusual, for sure," she murmurs.

"Aku," says an older woman appearing from inside the little booth. She nods when she sees she has their attention, and then she lovingly picks up the wavy-bladed dagger he was adoring. "Aku, the _soul_."

"Is that its name?"

"No, no. See. It has aku, every one. Life."

Life. "We could use some life," he admits. A glance to Kate. She gives him a short shake of her head, and she's right. "It has aku, I do see. But we wouldn't know what to do with it." It's not their culture, and he feels strange about the appropriation. Even if they do need a lot of life.

"Ceremony," she says, and gestures somewhere over her shoulder. "You can go, bless."

Is she dismissing them? Her English is accented, only a bit broken, but like most of these vendors, it's clear she's used to dealing with American and European tourists.

The woman pushes the dagger towards him, and nods her head again, a little bow. "You need aku. Earth, fire, wind, water, all use to make keris. All in here for you. Go and bless with the keris." Another jab of her finger. As if pointing the way.

Kate slides in closer, their shoulders brushing. "Is that - a temple?" She points the same direction the woman was gesturing, and now Castle sees the red lintel posts, the broad red porch peeking between two massive office buildings. "Are visitors allowed?"

"Yes, temple. Sin Sze Si Ya temple. Saints and miracles. For all, for you. What you need."

"Yes," Kate chokes out. She glances to him and he can read it in her eyes; she knows as much as he does that this woman is simply trying to make a sale. A two hundred dollar knife with a little promise of magic and mystery.

"For you, one hundred dollar," she says, and takes his hand, unfolding it to place the dagger, sans sheath, on his palm. "Feel it? Good price for you, good luck for me."

"Oh no, no," Kate says. "We can't-"

"You can, you need this, you need _bless_ -" She throws up both hands, shaking her head as if the very idea of their not taking this deal is ridiculous. "A gift, one hundred dollars cheap. For you, saints and miracles."

He regrets turning away, it's beautiful really, but he has to put it down. The woman catches his hand, must see his decision, because she holds his hand up in both of hers, as if weighing the whole thing, deciding.

"I tell you the truth. A little crooked." She gives them a witchy smile and traces a finger down the middle of the blade. "Balance is wrong. But you need blessing, not blood. You see."

Castle swallows hard, stares down at the dagger in his hand. A hundred dollars. He _has_ a hundred dollars of course, and Kate _did_ choose this one herself, pointing out that it was actually quite beautiful with the etched woodwork and the complex steel and copper on the blade.

"Bless," the woman says, and gestures to the temple.

And that's when he catches sight of the intricate tableau worked into the sheath, a wider landscape to frame the blade's art.

Elephants. A parade of elephants, trunk to tail, a whole herd of elephants ranges along the sheath with the smallest, the baby, near the tip. _Banni._ The tusks aren't ivory but copper, the big wise eyes copper too, and they gleam in the light, reflecting back a bright promise.

"Okay," he answers, _hears_ himself answering, and he can't believe he's doing this. But he reaches into the money pocket of his travel pants, the ones he had made ages ago for all the self-seeking international adventures he never went on, and he pulls out the money.

"Rick," his wife breathes at his side. "We can't."

"We can. We've been led right to it." He closes his hand around the hilt and takes the sheath from the woman's offering, and she folds the money into a secret place in her skirt, subtle and gracious. He presses the blade into its sheath until it snicks home, and then he carries it against his chest, over the still-burning, tightly-knotted bullet scar that never seems to be completely healed.

"Thank you," he says, and half bows back to the woman. He turns to Kate and dares her to keep denying the universe.

She doesn't. Instead, she orients towards the temple and tugs him after, on a collision course with the universe.

 **x**


	4. Banni - Final Chapter

**Banni - Final Chapter**

* * *

The Sin Sze Si Ya Temple is wedged between two commercial buildings, one a bank with a long line at the ATM and the other boarded up and crumbling concrete. Its squat edifice is only two floors, but the closer they get the more she can see: ornate dragons molded from plaster and painted green and red, the sign in red with gold Chinese characters, and the wooden red posts designating its sacred space.

It... doesn't seem like much.

Castle takes her hand on the sidewalk and Kate squeezes, her breath catching with an anticipation she can't help feeling.

They pass over the threshold together, and into a dim hallway with ornate gilt designs, mosaic tiles with gold accents. They approach a desk at the end, just before what looks to be a court yard. She can't see all the way inside from here, but she has the impression of brilliant light and serene statues sitting in repose.

Behind the desk is a man sitting patiently before candles in neat stacks and joss sticks in golden bowls. A lacquered black box holds parchment paper, rough quality, perhaps even handmade. Another box, this one with a lid and locked at the clasp, has intricate designs of dragons and cherry blossoms, bridges over rivers of gold. A neatly printed sign in Cantonese and English reads: _donate to temple maintenance._

"Is this.. where we start?" Castle says, shifting on his feet.

"This is perhaps more the middle." At Castle's bewildered look, the man merely smiles beatifically. "What kind of blessing would you like?" he says, a subtle nod of his head to the box.

Castle pulls out the little wad of paper money, and the dagger in its sheath angles awkwardly at his waistband. He slides a ten into the slit in the top of the box and the man behind the desk gestures towards the blade.

"You will put the lock on the keris, yes?"

"Oh," Castle says, fumbling now with it. Kate reaches in to help, finds the mechanism first, which she didn't notice before, and flips a metal clasp down over a knob on the sheath so that it locks them together. The clasp is so finely worked that the whole lock disappears into the design. "Yeah, thanks, Kate. Got it."

"You can have the master say a blessing over it as he does his prayers," the man says kindly. "What kind of blessing did you want?"

"Ah, yes. Well. What kinds are there?" Castle asks in return.

Kate finds herself silent, not out of the same awkwardness she can read in Castle's body, but for an anticipation that borders on reverence.

Everything about the timing of this calls to something in her that is more than just her body. Something made of air and light, something so difficult to define but nevertheless still living, still struggling to believe.

The man pulls out a sheet of paper, begins writing in an ornate calligraphy. "Blessings for health, business, study, safety, travel, family-"

"Family," she interrupts, nodding in an apology. "A blessing over our family." Whatever it looks like, however their future unfolds.

The man writes something down on the handmade paper, the calligraphy so elegant and beautiful that it takes her breath away. He hands it to her, not Castle, and she watches the ink dry in her very fingers. More brown than black, the expert lines crisp and bold, and yet so delicate.

"Your sifu approaches."

She glances up to find a man has materialized before them with a short bow. "The master," Castle murmurs, translating for her. The sifu wears what she can see are ceremonial clothes, black tunic and pants, red cuffs and braided knots for clasps.

His feet are bare, and they are shown to a mat just inside where they can remove their shoes to put on slippers with soft linen paper over the insoles. The sifu touches her wrist for the calligraphy paper, reads, nods. "Your names?"

"Rick," she says, touching her husband. "And Kate." Two fingers at the hollow of her throat, and she can feel herself swallow.

The master nods again, collecting a handful of joss sticks from the small table by the wall of shoes. The sifu is silent, his movements practiced and graceful. He hands her a tea candle, and then one to Castle, and he smiles.

She finds herself smiling back. The master takes a long stick and lights the end of it from the large candle on the table. He lights the joss sticks, and then their tea candles, and the flames leap as they catch.

"Be welcome, be at peace; we are all containers of the uncreated energy. Come," he says, and walks towards the center of the court yard, trailing smoke.

* * *

The court yard feels cool, sheltered from the heat of the Malay day. The temple opens up with air and light, cross pieces of black lacquer and clear glass panes. Intricate gold panels show Taoist stories and reflect the temple's deities in various poses of regard and favor. Faint trails of incense waft up to the light, dust particles catching in the smoke and winking like peculiar stars.

Open space, and the dust motes, and the light pale smoke, and the sun brilliant through the skylights. The red curves of the two main pillars lift the temple to the heights, gold script in plaques around their circumference. The wide floor is bare and white tiled with little gold half moons, a mother of pearl sheen to the pattern. In the center of the court yard is an altar table draped in red cloth with green and gold designs.

Dragons, mostly, but hints of the mix of cultures ride through the Cantonese - full blooms of tropical flowers, Mehndi designs, mosaics. Strange figures, some looking demonic while others peaceful, entwine on wide panels in gold and ink and red.

At the far end is a dragon's open mouth, stylized and swooping, curls of gold and green. Red paper lanterns with long gold and green tassels hang from the buttresses, dazzling sunlight making them glow.

She's so overwhelmed by the artistry, the devotion inside, that she nearly misses the monks and nuns at their prayers. Various points along the court yard and further inside, joss sticks burning. A drum hangs to one side and a monk sounds it once, a low timbre that vibrates through the floor.

It's like a signal; the master begins his blessing.

The sifu has his back to her, the joss sticks in his hand burning lightly, and now she sees the brocade of his black tunic, the stitching which depicts long-feathered birds soaring towards a textured sun, clouds rolling across his shoulders, black on black.

He bows once towards the altar, his eyes closed, and now she can hear the hum that vibrates his whole body. A hum of language, a hum of hypnosis, a prayer.

Now he begins to speak aloud, the joss sticks barely moving side to side in his fist, the incense rising on smoke towards the sunlight. He turns back to them, moves the joss sticks before their bodies, up and down, the smoke in patterns.

Castle takes her hand as the master taps his fisted joss sticks into one palm, a wave and a sweep, like the birds stitched into his tunic.

He begins to pray in earnest, his words in Cantonese running together into a blur of music. Faint flecks of cinder drop from the end of the incense sticks to turn to snow-ash by the time they touch the tile. He moves the sticks between his fingers as he prays, like beads on a rosary, like a worry stone, as if needing the tactile sensation to ground him in the words themselves.

The smoke drifts. The smell sickly sweet and light. She feels peculiar, aware, her airways widening, her vision opening to the whole world.

The prayer rises in pitch, falls again. A bell sounds and resounds, wavering in the temple court yard, rising towards the crossbeams and the light.

The master bows in sudden silence, elbows in, and then the drum pulses through the space, under her feet. Castle shivers and the sifu looks right at him, begins his prayers again.

The Cantonese is too fast for her husband; she sees his mouth moving faintly as he tries to catch the meaning. The sifu's gaze is far away, something other, but his eyes rest squarely on Castle's chest, the place her husband was shot.

The prayer is a mumble, but the faint smoke begins to curl around Castle's body. She doesn't know what to do; she can tell by Rick's face he wasn't expecting something so specific, so directed. He takes hold of the hilt of the keris still in his waistband and removes the dagger, a careful and slow display, and then holds it out in his palm.

The Cantonese pitches higher, a clear note. The prayer itself seems to widen, the incense curl in the air, the blessing rising to encompass the whole temple. It's no longer just for them, it's the world being caught up in the master's prayer.

Their eyes meet. They're unsure how this goes, if the slow-burning joss sticks have to be snuffed out to finish this ritual, or if they just walk away.

Kate turns back to the sifu, thinking to say something, but now his eyes are open and fixed on her. Fathoms lie in his gaze. A hand comes up to hover in the air between them while the incense coils around her hips, makes her limbs loosen, her eyes blink.

Some invisible heaviness lifts from her. The prayer cuts off, and all is silence for a heartbeat.

Their wounds. He's found their wounds.

The joss sticks burn between them, held out, an offering to the space left by their bodies. The air is filling with the light and cool smoke. Just above their clasped hands, rising at their arms, a dragon of curled smoke begins to unravel. As if drawing out a spirit of darkness.

A bell sounds. The master puts his fisted hand into one palm, a breath and a heartbeat, and the burning joss sticks are placed on the altar in a gold vase.

The ceremony might be done, but the blessing still burns.

* * *

Outside, in the humidity and traffic, he loses it, that feeling he had when the smoke unfolded at his chest.

Maybe it's the certainty they found looking in each other's eyes when the blessing was complete, maybe it's only the cool quiet, but he loses it. It slips away, leaving only the faint impression of serenity in its wake.

But that impression is more than enough. It's a taste of life again, the one that matters, the internal life, where all the hardest work is done to be more than they are. It _exists_ , it has substance and makes things different, and for a few moments today, like with the elephants on Bali, they embodied it. Together.

That's awe-striking.

"Rick," she says, a shake of her head as she glances back to the temple's entrance. "Uncreated energy?"

"Don't question, just feel."

"No," she says, an answer to one or the other. It matters which. She closes her eyes and a fierceness crawls over her face. "I love you. I don't need babies with you, I don't _want_ babies with you. I want this." _This_ echoes and echoes as if rising like a bell in a court yard.

Rising like a bird.

* * *

They take a cab back to the hotel, sitting silent in the backseat, hands touching, playing, an awareness to their connection. He watches the offices and restaurants slide by, the foot traffic, the pedestrians and tourists. Soft music plays from the radio, a string of red beads hangs from the rearview mirror and swings in time with the lilting curve of flutes. He remembers a night in New York, Coltrane still ringing in their ears as they headed home from the club, the feel of her knee sliding against his thigh, the hum.

At the hotel, through the beige lobby to the elevator, their fingers hook together, the quiet of knowing. They rise as the elevator ascends, adventing to the seventh floor, the doors rolling back like a scroll.

His skin is sensitive, his fingertips tingling. It's not a tease but a dance, the prefiguring of a second coming, a second chance for them in this life.

It's taken a year and six months to get here, but it's worth it.

She unlocks their door with the keycard she slips from the back pocket of her jeans. She turns and the look she gives him over her shoulder is delicate and arch and inviting. He follows her into the room and the door shuts under its own weight - no need for bodies slamming, no call for lightning-licked explosions of heat. They have time, they have time; they are alive, the embodiments of living uncreated energy.

She takes the keris from his waistband where it's made an uncomfortable divot in his side; she soothes under his shirt with her fingers, a little scratch at the skin in greeting. The dagger is placed in honor at the center of the dresser, the folded calligraphy of their paper blessing tucked into the clasp at the sheath.

He takes her by the elbow to touch the soft smooth skin at that inside bend of her arm, and she shivers in sensation. Her eyes lift to his, a smile lurking in places too deep for lips, and she walks back to the bed; he follows without a word.

She unbuttons the two pearls at the top of her blouse, loosening the collar in invitation, preparation. He frames her hips with his hands and bends low to breathe so-soft kisses to clavicles and collar. She hums like a Taoist prayer, her fingers drag at his sides. They reveal their new bodies in layers of patina, newness and yet familiarity. His shirt is tugged over his head; he's much more careful with hers, the gauzy fluid material against her skin, her arms lifting to help with that hot flare of triumph in her eyes.

(Six months ago, that movement still held stiffness and frustration. Twelve months ago they laid on a therapy table side by side and wept in exhaustion. Eighteen months ago, neither of them thought she would live.)

The mattress sinks under their weight. She skims her panties off with one hand, her toes kicking them away. He's already worshipping, the scars and wounds, the places recently blessed by incense curling up to the light. She sighs like lust, shivers with a knee digging into his thigh, rolls to put him on his back. He strokes his hands up and down her ribs, warming the goose bumps that flare, and they kiss.

Everything in its own time. _Slowly, slowly,_ she whispers at his lips. Her tongue and a hum, his senses filled with sweet smoke that still clings to her hair, the soft place at her neck. _Slowly,_ he chides, while her body is taken over with that hard roll of hips. He knows each shallow and delight, she has always been his best Christmas present, the wrapping as gorgeous as the soul inside, but this is a holiday without measure. A Christmas miracle.

They are far from New York, sans snow, sans evergreen, but here is the spirit of the holiday, burning between them.

They're alive.

 **x**


	5. Path to Paradise - Chapter One

**A Season in Hell / Path to Paradise - Chapter One**

the AU prompt: what if Castle took the bullet at Montgomery's funeral?

 **A/N:** In the **Path to Paradise** story, I skipped over their Christmas to get right to Castle's surgery, so this is an insert of that Christmas pre-surgery.

* * *

 _The Present is the point at which time touches eternity.  
C. S. Lewis  
_

* * *

"That was the surgeon," Kate called to him. "He said your blood work looks good."

Castle didn't bother replying, stuck as he was in his office chair and afraid to move a muscle. The surgery was slated for the day after Christmas, if all went according to plan, but he'd been suffering through this pain for months now, and it'd had the effect of making him a non-believer. _Kate_ was the optimistic one in this relationship right now, and he was man enough to admit it.

"Babe?"

He grunted and tried to lean forward, tried to push past the resistance of pain and fear of pain.

Not happening.

Kate came through the doorway looking for him, phone in one hand and her coat in the other. Irritation creased her face. "Did you hear-"

"I heard, yeah," he said, breath whistling through his teeth. Still trying. Still not moving. "Thanks."

She studied him for a moment; her lines softened. "I can brace you."

He wanted to growl nasty things and have her leave; he wanted to whimper and bury his face in her stomach and feel her fingers in his hair. He did neither, and he felt pretty damn proud of that restraint. "Thank you, but I'll-"

"Sounded polite, like an offer," she interrupted, flinging her coat over a chair as she came forward. "But it wasn't. More of a demand. Give me your hands, Rick."

He both hated and thrilled to the way she called him his given name. She meant business; she also sometimes meant sex. But he swiveled in his chair using only his toes and she pressed her lips together in that not-a-smile smile.

She offered her hands and he gave her his own, clasping tightly around her forearms as she did the same. She stepped in close, closer, thighs straddling his knees, and he couldn't help the sensation of expectation that crawled down his spine and tightened his guts.

She pressed her feet to the base of the chair to keep it from rolling, and then she gave him a warning grimace. He tensed; she pulled; he got his heels dug into the rug and found himself rising.

In pain.

It started as a hot knife between his shoulder blades that then tore across his back and into his chest. The horror was garbled in his throat but she always knew, she always could tell.

"I got you, I got you," she breathed. Strong where he was weak and shaking. "Just give it a minute. You've been sitting too long."

He knew that; they both knew that. They'd made eye contact when she'd come home from work this afternoon and found him here, and she hadn't said it, she was very good about not saying it, but they'd known it was going to be a bitch in a few hours.

Now was the reckoning.

She pressed her lips to his cheek where his hunched body put them even. "It's okay. You know I don't mind, you know it's only my fault you're here-"

"Not your fault," he choked out. And straightened with the force of his certainty. His back spasmed and threatened to topple him again, but he hung on, he had to. "Might be your fault I love you, you're just so inspiring, but not your fault this guy is gunning for you."

Her face was composed, her eyes specific. But she didn't deny his claim; she didn't try to argue.

"You have therapy," he realized, cursing himself for not paying attention. Why she'd brought her coat in with her, why she was still dressed in her work clothes. "You should have gone straight there, I've made you late." Castle tried to push her off, releasing her forearms.

"He stopped charging me late fees weeks ago," she murmured, a faint smile. She released him a lot more slowly. Waiting to see if he'd topple.

When he didn't, she cupped his face lightly and kissed his mouth.

He didn't move, wouldn't try it yet, still attempting to live with the glass shards in his muscles. Actually, bullet fragments and bone shards that impinged on his nerves, but it felt like glass shards. He felt lousy with glass shards.

She was studying him as she detached. Picked up her coat. He wanted badly to help her with it, slide his hands over her shoulders, maybe even lower his head to kiss the nape of her neck as he brushed back her hair.

But if he moved right now, it would be all over.

"Go," he told her.

She nodded.

And she left.

* * *

She came back. Of course she did. But it wasn't until noon the next day. She'd been forced to cut short her therapy session when a body had dropped, literally, a Santa had fallen out of the sky, and while it was definitely a Beckett flavored case, endlessly perplexing, she had missed him more.

Castle should have been at that crime scene, spinning yarns about magic reindeer drunk on Christmas nog spilling an equally intoxicated Claus out of his sleigh.

But he hadn't been. And she'd been sunk into the case since last night.

She missed him more.

When she arrived at his apartment, digging the key out from under her shirt, the metal warm where it had lain against her chest, she had a minor wave of panic when she didn't at first find him. But she did the breathing exercises Dr Clark had taught her and she used her rational mind to pluck her phone from her pocket and text him.

He was down in the storage room with Alexis.

Which was how she got roped into carting tupperware boxes upstairs to his loft with the girl, the two of them at his beck and call. When he seemed satisfied with their haul, he started unpacking.

Christmas decorations.

Her heart quailed within her.

She had, somehow, forgotten about Christmas. She never could entirely shut out the holidays from her mind, not when her mother's absence was always with her, but the reality of sparkling decorations and putting up lights and scheduling the dinner and finding meaningful gifts for the man who had taken a bullet for her - that had been put aside.

Speaking of, her partner was unwrapping each item with deliberation, his eyes soaking up the color and nostalgia of hand-painted ornaments and overwrought nutcrackers. Castle, poor man, was hampered by the evident pain in his back, his enthusiasm tempered only by the struggle to not overdo it.

"Rick," she murmured, decisively moving towards him. "Tell me what I can do."

He grimaced, looked up from the wreath in his hands with its gold foliage and red velvet ribbon. "I look that bad?"

"You look only slightly better than miserable." She laid a hand on his arm, squeezed. "You did too much."

"First time in... decades," he sighed, "that I haven't had a single decoration out the day after Thanksgiving. Even when Alexis was a baby, I made the time. You know? I didn't even think of it until this morning. A commercial on television."

"Had a lot of things on our minds, busy year," she said. "And I'm a pretty big handicap in this game."

"You don't handicap me-"

"I meant observing the holidays," she smiled, grateful for that lick of fire in his eyes. Indignation on her behalf. She leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "My dad and I couldn't bring ourselves to unpack the things we'd boxed up in such anguish, without her, and each year that went past, it never got easier. So we just stopped trying. Eventually it got to be a kind of memorial to her, to cut ourselves off from the whole thing."

"Oh." His face sagged. "Oh, I... Kate."

"Don't be sad for me now," she said, sliding her arm around his waist and hugging him. Kept it easy, no force. She gestured to the copious decorations in various tubs that filled his living room. "Looks like you're determined to make up for it all in one year."

"This is only half," he winced. He lowered the wreath to the container and pulled the lid back on. "Don't need to do this now. Alexis and I can do it, when you're at work or - we'll leave space for your memorial. I'll keep it out of the bedroom and-"

"Don't do that," she said. She felt sick at the thought of walking into the loft and finding it filled with good cheer, and that was awful. She shouldn't. She couldn't keep associating Christmas and New Year's with her mother's body in an alley. "Please don't try to work around me. You'll just make us both miserable."

"I can respect your traditions just as well as you've been respecting mine. Thanksgiving you even-"

"Castle," she insisted. "Living with you might be temporary, until you've completely healed, but at some point..." She felt her cheeks warm. She had found the box in his closet, the blue Tiffany's box; she hadn't allowed herself to open it. She wasn't supposed to know. "At least this way, if I'm overwhelmed, I can head back to my place for a night." She scowled. "And then call my therapist and get an appointment for the next day."

"What about now, tonight?" He still hadn't moved to re-open the storage container. "Are you here for the night?"

She hated to say it. "I have to be back in a few hours. Lanie is doing a rush on the autopsy. It's Santa, you know. He fell out of the sky. Made me miss you."

His hesitation and uncertainty disappeared in the wash of glee across his face. "Out of the _sky?_ Like a real life _Santa Claus_?"

She threaded her arm through his and proceeded to tell him all about it.

* * *

When Kate left, he did his best to valiantly carry on. But the ache between his shoulder blades and digging under his scapula was enough to send shooting pains into his skull. Not to mention the fact that where he really wanted to be was at the precinct with her, and he wasn't in the mood for tinsel and nutcrackers and the Christmas train.

He plodded through the effort of unpacking the garland and wreaths, forcing himself onward, until he reached the lights.

And then he abandoned all hope.

Alexis was right there, waiting on him it seemed. She had a glass of water and a pill and she proffered them with that secret smile on her face that he was beginning to hate. Instead, he plucked both from her hands and wished for a coffee.

He swallowed the pain pill, it was a muscle relaxer that the new pain specialist had prescribed, and he drank the full glass of water. He always woke with a dry mouth and gritty eyes, and he drank copious water in hopes that this time would be different. It wouldn't. But it was Kate's suggestion, ever the optimist about this, and he dutifully obeyed even when she wasn't here.

"Alexis?" he asked, rubbing a thumb against the smudge of his mouth on the glass. "What do you think about taking it easy for Christmas this year?"

"Because of Detective Beckett, or because of you?"

He winced. "Both, I think. My surgery is the 26th and... you know." He wasn't sure he was getting his point across; he wasn't sure he wanted to get it across. He sighed. "Maybe take it easy on Kate too."

"She doesn't do much for Christmas, does she?"

"I think it's more along the lines of nothing." He was only marginally uncomfortable using Kate as his excuse.

Alexis gave a considering look his way, then dropped her gaze to the floor. She grabbed the glass from his hand and turned back for the kitchen, still not speaking.

Already there was the faint buzz in his hands and feet, a tingling of blood drowned with sedatives. Probably all in his head. But he needed to get horizontal soon.

"Dad?"

"Yeah."

"If it's really that you can't do it, tell me?"

He had never disappointed his daughter at Christmas since that first year Meredith had left, when his ex-wife just hadn't shown up despite promising for weeks that she had a flight at noon.

Which she had missed. And then missed the next one. 'Missed.'

"I can't do it," he admitted. Her face fell. "No, I mean, we're having _Christmas_. That's for sure. But the big production we make out of it, that's a little out of my league this year. Do you mind if we scale it back?"

"Oh, Dad."

Yeah, that wasn't what he was going for either. "Hey, no, don't worry about it, pumpkin. We're just taking it down a notch this year. That's all. It's not the end of the world."

"No, don't worry about me. I just want you to not wear yourself out trying to do something for me when I'm - I mean - I'm an adult. I'm a big girl." She came back to him and took him by the elbow. "Come on, Dad. Let's get you to bed before the muscle relaxer makes you dizzy."

Just six months ago, he might have protested her coddling, her dismissal. Reminded her that he was, in fact, her father.

But instead he parted with her at his bedroom door, and he made his shambling way towards the bed and sank into it, face first.

 **x**


	6. Path to Paradise - Final Chapter

**Season in Hell / Path to Paradise - Final Chapter**

* * *

He woke to fingers scratching his scalp, a soft warmth at his side. He was flat on his face in the bed, heavy, and he hated sleeping on his stomach. His eyes refused to open, plastered with sawdust, and his mouth wouldn't let his dry tongue move.

A kiss at his ear, the scent of her hair and lotion a teasing dream.

"Got something for you," she murmured. Another kiss, at his jaw. "When you're with me."

He grunted, slow to untangle from the sedative.

Her fingers moved to his neck, digging in. Castle groaned, and she leaned into it, her breast against his shoulder such a nice warm weight. Her fingers pinched and something in his neck popped.

He twitched in reflex and she paused. "Hurt you?"

"It's good," he slurred, slowly turning his face to the pillow. She took it as a signal to dig deeper, and he was grateful for how she knew him, how she hadn't backed away despite his many complicated issues.

She pressed the heels of her hands into either side of his spine and massaged those muscles all the way down.

He groaned and turned to put his cheek to the pillow, blinked in the darkness. "What time's it?"

"Little after nine." She leaned in and laid out next to him, her elbow in the mattress to prop up her head. "Hey." She was smiling in a crazy kind of way, much more alive and vivid than he'd ever seen her. She leaned in and kissed the side of his nose, and _her_ nose was frigid.

"Are you - where've you been?"

"Somewhere fun," she grinned. Traced a finger around his eye socket. Kissed him again.

"Are you rubbing it in?" he muttered. "Cause I wanted to be there, see Lanie's face when she discovered she couldn't autopsy Kris Kringle-"

"No," she laughed, "no, not him. And she did, by the way. Not Kris Kringle. Come on, can you get up yet? I'll show you where I've been."

He was so mesmerized by the beauty of her joy that he didn't at first respond. And then her meaning slowly worked its way through the fog of his head and he'd do anything for her.

"Yeah. I'm awake."

He pushed his hands under him and ignored the flares of pain that woke in his shoulders. She reached across his chest and leveraged him upright, taking half his weight with her badass cop skills.

She patted his cheek when he had to pause at the side of the bed, rest. Her fingers played over his jaw and back to his ear. "Take a second," she whispered. "Got all night."

"Didn't mean to drag you-"

"Hush." Her kiss was gentle, and he sighed into it, depressed. Couldn't even get out of bed on his own these days. Only thing that worked was the ultrasound therapy, and then even that lasted for only a few hours. This surgery couldn't get here fast enough.

She tugged. Brushed back the hair that had fallen in his eyes.

He swallowed and wished she would kiss him again.

"Come on, with me." She squeezed his knee and he tried to rise, tried to get his feet. For the first time, he realized he could hear music playing from the living room, soft and crooning, wandering jazz.

He glanced at her.

She was grinning again, devilish and cute and her hair was so pretty around her face. And maybe he was still a bit stoned on muscle relaxers. Maybe.

"Come on," she whispered. "Come on. You don't want to miss what we did."

"What did we do?"

She laughed and kissed his nose, pulling him to his feet. "Not we, you and me, but the rest of us, your family." She braced his hips to get him moving forward and he did, he was walking, and now he reached back for her hand.

She laced their fingers and went ahead of him, down the hall and towards the living room, the music he now recognized, Bing Crosby.

And the scent of pine. Sweet evergreen, sharp needles. Filling his lungs.

She was ahead of him and for an instant, her body blocked his sight. Music, pine, the crisp taste of apples at the back of his throat-

"Oh my God."

She turned and grinned widely at him.

"Surprise!" Alexis called from the couch. She rose and his mother did as well, framing what was a _massive_ Christmas tree. Needles had shed on the rug, and the top was crooked, but it was easily eight feet in height and had the fullest limbs he'd ever seen.

"What?" he gasped.

Kate's hand squeezed in his. "Come on."

"What." He blinked, but the bare tree was still there, a behemoth. "Where did this come from?"

"It was Katherine's idea," his mother cooed. She came for him with open arms and clasped him around the waist, careless of his shoulders as she tugged him down. "She's marvelous, darling."

He tensed until she let him go, but it was okay because Kate was sliding up under his arm, bracing him herself. She gripped the back of his shirt, hanging on.

He stared at the tree dominating his living room, at all the containers and tubs that were scattered around, the half-unpacked decorations. And that _tree._

He looked at her. "Where did this _come_ from?"

"Um, there's a service," she said, gritting her teeth. "I couldn't imagine how I was going to get a monster up here, and I spent hours until I called Alexis... well, turns out the rich have people that do it for them."

He laughed, and it pulled across his back, but it felt good. "We do. Yes. I always pick it out myself but have the Christmas Tree Farm guys deliver and set it up."

"Well," she smirked. "That's what I did. Except they picked it out on Alexis's specs. You like it?"

"It's gorgeous. It's huge. Wow."

"You can sit here, Dad," Alexis said, drawing him towards the couch. She had cleared off a space, storage containers on the floor. "And we'll finish the tree."

"I could-"

"No," Kate said, a warning. "You can't. You, Rick Castle, will sit right there and dictate like the tyrant you love to be." She gentled it with a kiss to his mouth and her hands at his hips, nudging him towards the couch. He went because she was so proud of herself, and because the tree was enormous, and because those bullet fragments in his back hurt like a bitch.

He sat down and his daughter poured a whole bucket of ornaments into his lap. "Pick out your favorites, Dad. We'll decorate the tree exactly like you tell us."

"Well," his mother sniffed. "I won't. I will do as I like. But you order around your girls, that's fine."

Kate laughed, sharing a look with him. He lifted an eyebrow in return, and she leaned in and ruffled his hair. "I might do as I like as well, just being honest." Her next kiss was gentle against the corner of his eye. "But the whole thing, Rick. All of it. Not just the tree. The nutcrackers, the train, the garland and the wreaths and the lights on display in your windows."

"Someone found my master plan, I see," he grumbled. "Snooping through my stuff."

"You were the one to pull it all out," she reminded him. "It was right there on top."

"Dad? Where does this one go? Is this the star we always put on the top?"

He glanced past Kate to his daughter. "No that's one of the window displays. Put it aside. There should be two others. The tree star topper is somewhere in the red bucket."

"Ooh, I got it. I found it. Okay. I need a stool or something, this tree is huge."

He grinned as his daughter's excitement filled the room, and then shivered as Kate ran her fingers through the hair on his neck. She stepped away, taking an ornament with her, heading for the tree.

He stayed on the couch, just as she'd demanded, and he watched as his family hung ornaments and unpacked garland and untangled lights. His mother handed him a glass of egg nog, moderately spiced, and Kate came back for another ornament.

She looped garland around his neck and kissed his egg-noggy mouth, smiling the whole time.

"Kate," he sighed, garland itchy at his neck. "I-"

"I know," she said. Another kiss. She was filling him with kisses tonight. "So I got you a tree, Rick. Now. Where does this go?"

He tugged on the pocket of her jeans while Alexis and his mother were distracted by the intricacies of tangled lights. Kate stepped back to him and took his hand, their fingers squeezing briefly before she sat.

He shook his head. "You didn't have to do all this. I know you have your own traditions-"

"Doing nothing isn't a tradition."

"Sure it is," he said. His throat was dry. "For you it is. For your loss. You don't have to do _any_ of this, Kate. We were going to scale it back. And I've not really been in the mood for-"

She caught his gesturing hand, kissed his fingertips even as they curled. "Castle. The reason you're not in the mood is because you took a bullet for me. You saved my life. The very least I can do is save Christmas."

 **x**


	7. Inherited Traits

**Inherited Traits - Chapter One**

* * *

Kate skimmed her fingers over the material, smiled to herself.

She had the perfect plan this year. His daughter had even agreed to help. Everyone was getting him variations on a theme, from his mother and Alexis to the boys at the precinct to even his agent and publisher. They had all been delighted to join in, and even though she hadn't relished giving it away to everyone _but_ him, she couldn't wait to see his face on Christmas Day.

Or well, Christmas Eve, most likely. He and his family had always opened presents after dinner on Christmas Eve. She had agreed to the tradition because she and _her_ family had quit Christmas altogether.

Alexis wandered ahead of her through the boutique, her perusal just as thoughtful as Kate's. The girl hadn't seemed that surprised when Kate had roped her into the plan, but she also hadn't been entirely enthusiastic either. Kate was just grateful Alexis had agreed to keep the secret, that she hadn't been put out by her hijacking Christmas this way.

Maybe it had been little Cosmo that had softened Alexis's heart? Directly after Thanksgiving when the baby had been left at their crime scene, Alexis had come home to find them passed out in the living room with Martha caring for the infant in the too-early morning hours. Of course, Alexis had been just on this side of horrified, but she'd warmed to the poor thing as well.

However it had happened, Alexis was on her side - of that she could be sure. The distance and the ice the girl had frozen Kate with since she and Castle had gotten married last Christmas was at least partially melted. Or melting.

She hoped.

Alexis came up at her side in front of a display of monogrammed towels. Kate touched a swirl of fuchsia that embroidered a C on the item, and Alexis gave a little soft sigh.

Kate was too chicken to ask. She didn't _want_ there to be a problem; she wanted a happy family, she wanted it to be easy.

Alexis called her name. Very quietly. A kind of resignation in her voice.

So the girl was going to confront it, the aloofness and the attitude. The chill in their relationship.

Kate braced herself and turned to his daughter. Her wedding ring had never felt so heavy on her hand, a responsibility to do this exactly right, to not mess this up for them. For him. His chosen child.

"Kate?" Alexis said again, and her lips twisted. "I - need you to know something." The girl took in a shaky breath. "It's not fair if... can we talk?"

"Of course," she lied. She didn't want to talk; she never wanted to talk. She pressed a hand to that place just below her sternum where it still ached sometimes. "In here or shall we get coffee?"

"If we leave, I might not ever get the courage again," Alexis said, and her eyes roamed the displays around them. She gestured widely towards the soft pastels. "I need to - well, you should know. I feel like now especially, you should know this about - about Dad."

About - Castle?

"He's not my father."

The blood dumped right out of her head.

Alexis sprang forward and grabbed her, as if afraid Kate was going to collapse. But she wasn't; she wouldn't. That was the very last thing. Alexis let go, anxiety crawling across her face. "Kate? It's not - it's not bad. It's just that he doesn't know. And I've been keeping this secret for so long that I don't-"

"Oh, God," she croaked. Alexis knew. And Castle knew. But they didn't know the _other_ did.

What in the world was she supposed to say?

Alexis dropped her head. "I'm sorry. It was dumb to say anything. I shouldn't have. Ruined everything-"

"No," Kate gasped. Her heart was thundering. "No, _nothing_ is ruined. Alexis."

The girl crossed her arms over her chest, looked away. "I just needed someone to know. And after - after you and - it's just that you all are a family now and I'm not really part of it."

"Oh, God, no," Kate groaned. She reached out and enfolded Alexis into an embrace, not letting her back away. "No, you're a part of this too. Why do you think I asked you to help me with Christmas? Alexis, all I have wanted is for you to - maybe like me a little bit-"

"I _do_ like you!"

"You've been so distant and-"

"It's just that you're real family and I'm not even blood-"

"I'm not blood," Kate said back, cradling the girl. "Family is what you _make_."

"And now with this," Alexis went on. "This will be your real family. I'm just the changeling Meredith foisted off on Dad and-"

"Do you think your dad doesn't love you, Alexis?" Kate pushed her back, gripping the girl by her shoulders. "How could you even begin to think-"

"No, I know he does, I know he does. I just..." Her face had such longing in it that Kate couldn't keep quiet.

But she had to be very careful about what she said. "He chose you," she insisted. "You are his daughter. No matter what blood or biology might say."

Alexis shrugged even as she nodded. Agreement with reservations.

"You and your dad need to talk."

"No!" Alexis gasped. Her eyes filled with tears. "No. And you can't tell him. I don't want to ruin - I want him to want me."

"He _does_ ," she growled. "How could he not? Alexis, I wouldn't have married him if he wasn't a good man."

"But just - good is one thing. Finding out I'm not even his? That my mom cheated on him with some - I don't even _know_ \- Meredith said - but I just - now with this, especially, because of Christmas and - and - and-"

"You need to talk to him," she answered. How could she reassure the young woman that this posed no threat? That Castle _knew already_. Without telling a story that wasn't Kate's to tell.

"Alexis. I fell in love with _your dad_. Do you understand me? He was a father first, and that was the thing that pulled me in, his being your father-"

"But he's _not_. He's not my dad, not really, and I don't want him to know."

"But-"

"Not now that he has a _real_ kid on the way."

And just like that, in the middle of the boutique baby store, Kate Beckett Castle experienced her first losing fight to hormones.

She cried.

* * *

Castle gave up on the chapter.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. The chapter was there, wholecloth in his head. But Castle himself just couldn't do it anymore.

His eyes were gritty, his fingers felt bruised. He'd written Nikki Heat for the last nine hours straight, had even refused a body call from his wife - as attractive as she'd made it sound - and he had not left the desk except for sustenance and bathroom breaks. And to keep his legs from falling asleep.

But now _sleep_ called to him. He was so weary he couldn't keep his head up. His back ached, his neck was stiff, and his ribs hurt from being hunched before the screen.

He wanted to write.

He had the _way_ , but he just didn't have the will.

He wanted to crash.

When Castle stumbled through to their bedroom, Kate was pacing back and forth from the bed to the bathroom door. He didn't even have the energy to catch her and bend her into a kiss; he just shucked his pants and crawled into bed.

She crawled in right after him and clung to his back before he could get settled.

"Whoa," he said, reaching back for her hand. "Kate?"

She said nothing, pressed her face to his shoulder blade.

He drew her hand forward, gave in to sleeping on his stomach so she could drape herself at his back. He was too tired to do his usual, probe and cajole her to speak. He had assumed she would be already asleep, since the body drop had come in at four and she'd worked through the late afternoon and into the winter evening.

"Castle," she said tightly.

He patted her hand, his eyes were already closed.

"Castle, I made a promise."

"You're good at keeping promises," he mumbled. The sheets felt so cool and soft.

"I promised not to say but you already know so it's not like breaking a promise-"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he sighed. The pillow against his cheek was lovely.

"If I told you about it obliquely then you'd know it had come up but I wouldn't be exactly breaking a promise-"

"Beckett, you have thirty seconds before I crash into oblivion."

She grunted and crawled around his back and squirmed in before him. He was forced to open his eyes to confront the worried, fretful thing that was his wife.

"What," he sighed.

"Thirty seconds isn't long enough. Just go to sleep," she whispered.

"No, no." He curled his hand around her wrist as if to keep her. "You started this. Finish it."

She chewed on her bottom lip in that most appealing way. He was dead tired but that would always get to him.

Kate huffed. "Okay, look. Do you remember our first kiss?"

He blinked. "Which first kiss? The fake one that wasn't fake or-"

"Castle," she whined.

He could cheerfully roll over and put his back to her and go to sleep.

"Come _on_ ," she hissed. "This is important. Our first kiss."

"Yes. Of course I do. I sneaked you away from the blood drive to kiss you illicitly inside that hotel lobby. Like you were an expensive escort and I wanted to get my money's worth."

She laughed, the tension and misery disappearing from her face. And she slapped his shoulder too, but that had been worth it. "You dork. An escort. What a lovely recounting of our first kiss."

"You _asked_. Like I wouldn't remember. That whole _day_ is burned into my brain, Kate. You helped me cover up a certain parenting issue with my daughter and then you fell in love with me for it."

Her lips twitched. She was silent.

"You said I'd never have to wonder with you," he answered, smiling gently and cupping the side of her face. A thumb over her lips. "I never have. Granted, it's only been a year-"

"Castle-"

"-but you've never wavered. I know that the PTSD can sometimes draw you into that darkness, but you've never been truly away from me, Kate. You don't need to worry."

Her eyes gentled. "Thank you, Rick." She kissed the edge of his thumb. "About that certain parenting issue..." She left off rather dramatically, pointedly, and raised an eyebrow.

His brain refused to follow. "Yeah?"

"Which originated our first kiss..."

He was blank.

And then it struck him.

He jerked upright in bed, staring down at her, his eyes racing over her body. _You'll never have to wonder._ "You're pregnant," he blurted out.

Her jaw dropped.

"Oh my God, we're having a _baby_?"

She stared at him, slowly lifted to a sitting position, her eyes as wide and round as his heart. "I... well. Yes."

He laughed out loud and flung his arms around her, squeezing her up against him, his heart racing and thundering, his joy exploding like a taste in his mouth. He hauled her into his lap and started kissing her - everywhere, all over - kissing that mouth and her eyes and the crooked tilt of her eyebrow and the gorgeous cheekbone he hoped their kid inherited.

"I - Castle - wait - that's not what I was trying to _say_. Damn it, why are you so good at detective work in _this_ case and so incredibly dense when it comes to your daughter?"

"It's a girl?" he gasped, pulling back just enough to look at her. "How do you know it's a girl? You can't be more than six weeks-"

"Castle," she whined. "You're totally ruining the surprise."

"What?"

"It's not a girl. I don't know, I mean, we still don't know yet. But that was going to be your _Christmas_ present-"

"Oh, whoops," he grinned, not repentant at all.

"It's literally your _entire_ Christmas and you just _guessed it_."

"But you were giving me clues!"

"No, I was _not_!"

"Yes, you were," he laughed. "Our first kiss, the blood drive. That very suggestive, _do you remember why-_ "

"It wasn't supposed to be about us," she whined, but her legs were twining around his waist, getting closer. She stroked the hair at his nape and kissed him back. "I can't believe you figured it out."

"You kept dropping hints-"

"Not about _this_ baby-"

"Oh my God, we're having a baby-"

"About Alexis."

He froze.

She pulled back from his lips, her eyes big and round and wide again. "I... wasn't supposed to tell you. But it's - agonizing to know that you both know and you're both so hurt and sad over it and it doesn't have to be like that."

"What?" he whispered. A baby. She was pregnant; they'd been married a year and it wasn't planned at _all_ but he'd wanted kids and what about Alexis?

"Alexis knows," she said softly. Painting his lips with her thumbs. "I'm so sorry. This is a clumsy and awkward a way to tell you-"

"About the baby?"

"No, babe, listen." She sat up a little straighter on his lap, put her hands on his shoulders. "Well, okay, yes, she does know about the baby. I told her because she's helping me with your Christmas, but that's not the point. Alexis knows she's not blood."

Castle blinked.

She cupped his face and kissed him very softly. "It's okay, it's okay, Rick. She's known for a while, it sounds like, and she's just worried that with the new baby she doesn't deserve to have a place-"

"Oh, God."

"But I told her no, that's never going to be true, and she - isn't exactly settled, but she does know that you love her; she just has a hard time believing-"

"No," he gasped.

"I know, I know," she said, wrapping her arms around him. And then letting him go. "You need to talk to her."

* * *

It was late, but Rick Castle was the farthest from tired he had ever been in his life.

He didn't exactly want to leave Kate in their bed with that kind of news, but she was wiped from the day - and from being _pregnant_ \- and she kept pushing on him to go, go, _talk to your oldest_ , which of course made him turn right back around to the bed and kiss her again and again, laughing and joyful and astonished in all the best ways.

And heartsick, at the same time.

When she had to kick him out of bed - her foot in his ass to push him off the mattress - he figured it was a good time to actually go. He had one last lingering look at the flat plane of her stomach, and then he was hustling out of the bedroom and towards the front entry. And the stairs. Alexis was home for the Christmas holidays.

Oh, and up apparently.

She had a sweatshirt pulled on over pajamas, coming slowly down the stairs. Castle stood at the bottom until she noticed him, and his heart was breaking for his girl.

His daughter by choice, his daughter of the heart, his daughter no matter who or what or any damn thing.

She paused before the bottom, wearing the face he had lately ascribed to jealousy and dislike, but which he now understood so much better.

She was afraid she didn't belong to him anymore.

"Pumpkin," he said softly, his body leaning out for her.

She leaned back, resisting, wary. "What." She glanced past him but when Kate wasn't in sight she gave a little shrug. "I just came down for some milk. A snack. I'm studying for exams."

He mounted the first step and wrapped his arms around Alexis, lifted her off the stairs and into his embrace. "I love you, Alexis, I will never stop loving you."

"Wh-what?"

"I've known since you were a baby."

She froze.

"Your mom had - never mind. I knew then. I've known almost your whole life, pumpkin. It changes absolutely nothing."

"Daddy," she keened, collapsing into him.

He set her down on the main floor, and now her arms snaked around his waist and she buried her face in his chest, sobbing.

"It's okay, it's okay to hurt," he whispered, rocking her a little. "I'm so sorry you found out and had to carry that alone. When - I mean, when did you find out-"

"When I was twelve."

" _Twelve?_ "

"Mom told me. She was being spiteful." Alexis still cried against his shoulder, hiding it.

"Yeah," he sighed. Meredith had been spiteful to him as well, using it like a weapon. "Oh, Alexis, since you were twelve? That breaks my heart, kiddo. You shouldn't have had to worry - have you been worried about me?"

"No," she cried. "I never worried about that. Not - not until-" She clammed up, shoulders hunching.

"Until-?" He combed her hair away from his face, down her back. "What is it, pumpkin? You _are_ my daughter; you can't take it back now, too late."

"No, no, I always wanted to be your daughter, so I just _was_. It never mattered to me before, not really. But now-"

Oh, now that there was a baby.

"Alexis," he chastised, hugging her harder. "You know what Kate told me?"

"Kate told you?" she gasped.

"No, well yes, actually. Hang on. Kate just told me, _go take care of your oldest._ Because no matter what, you're the older sister, my firstborn-"

"Wait, Kate _told you_?" She lifted her tear-streaked face from his chest, that bloom of a grin coming over her once more. "About... the...um-" An eyebrow went up.

"The baby," he grinned back.

She squealed, clapped her hand over her mouth, but she was jumping a little up and down.

He laughed. "Yeah, she didn't mean to, but I guessed. Well, I thought she was hinting about it, but turns out she was hinting about you-"

"You've known since I was a baby?" she whispered, her hand dropping, her face falling. "Daddy."

"Alexis, I was already in love with you. I held you in my arms the first time and - it was fierce. I wanted everything. I knew at the time that your mother had been - I knew it was a possibility. But oh, your sweet little face and those tufts of red hair, absolutely fell in love with you. You were mine, didn't care. You needed me, and I needed you."

"You don't need me now though," she said.

"Of course I do. My firstborn," he said gruffly, wrapping an arm around her neck and tugging her in against him. He kissed the top of her head. "Besides, need you to baby-sit."

She giggled.

"We can talk as much as you like about the paternity test your mother had done, or my feelings about everything, or your own. Any time. Any questions you have, you've got free range. I hope - my hope is that you still see me as your dad, that's the only - my one request, I get to be your dad."

"You are," she insisted. "You're my dad." Her lips turned up. "I do have one question."

"Shoot."

"Was Kate totally pissed at you for guessing?"

He laughed. "Little bit."

"That's what she gets for training you to be a detective."

 **x**


	8. Close Encounters - Chapter One

**Close Encounters - Chapter One**

* * *

Kate brushed her fingers through James's hair, staring out at the ocean from the cliffside beach. The baby - not really a baby any more, was he? - dipped away from her touch to bend down and draw his fingers through the sand.

"Ohhh!" he said, looking up at her.

"Sand," she chuckled. "Did you see the water? The ocean, James. It's a bit more impressive than the sand."

"Sand, Mommy. It cooooold."

"Is it cold?" She knelt beside him and touched the white grains wedged between the rocks and debris of this rough and tumble cliff beach. "Oh, it is cold. I didn't think of that. Well, it is winter time, baby."

"It cold and so soft."

"Oh?" She smiled at his wonder. He probably didn't remember this past summer on their island, chasing the foxes. He'd been two then, and newly three now. More child now, even if she still called him her baby. "Hm, it is soft."

"What this?"

"Um, that's a crab, I think. A really little one. It was fast."

"Fast," he echoed, poking his finger in the sand after it. "He go hide?"

"Maybe just going back to his home. He came out to see who was digging through his roof-"

James laughed brightly, delighted by her - and she had to admit she was pretty pleased for thinking of that. Castle was the story-teller in their family; James wasn't used to getting it from her.

"I swim, Mommy?"

"Too cold, even for you."

"But Daddy?"

"No, he and I have a deal. No more freezing lakes."

James cast a thoughtful look towards the waves, no doubt trying to understand her 'lake' when he was certain that was the ocean. She didn't bother to explain; she'd rather not dwell on the super-strength pneumonia that had nearly killed Castle.

She sank back to the sand and clasped her arms around her knees, watched the waves crash roughly against the rock-strewn shore. This beach looked as if pieces of the cliff above had broken off with the force of the incessantly pounding water.

It was brutal and it was bleak here, and she wanted to exist within it for a moment.

James laid his head against her arm, patted her raised thigh with a baby-round hand. She leaned forward to kiss the back of his neck, warm skin even in these temperatures, even without his coat.

His hair was tossed in the wind, dark strands given curl by the salt spray. His cheeks were ruddy, his grey eyes as silver as the sky. He watched the ocean too, his green sweater riding up in the back, his dark jeans coated with fine white sand.

Her sweet-hearted boy, whom she had fought for, struggled to create and sustain. But no struggle to love, never. Had her mother thought the same of her?

"Sad, Mama?"

"No, not sad. Just thinking about my mom, and how I wish she were here too."

"She not here," James said, glancing back to her. Solemn face. Squinting against the light behind her. "Papa miss her. Me and you miss her."

"You do, huh? You miss her."

"Yes." And that was all. James was turning back to the ocean with a little put-upon sigh, one fist in her jeans, hanging onto her. Claiming her, keeping her here, and not out there on the waves, soaring away from him.

"Okay, wolf," she said softly, ruffling his hair. She nudged him off her, dusting her jeans with a hand, getting to her feet. "Come on, we've left the guys alone too long anyway." She held out her hand for him but he scrambled up by himself, then made a face at the sand clinging to his palms.

He lifted his hands to her, a whine.

She chuckled and swiped them off, bent over to swat at his backside. "There. Mostly clean."

"Thank you, Mommy."

She smiled at that too, the earnestness in his gratitude, and she took his hand to lead him back towards the winding path to the top of the cliff.

He bounced on his toes. "I climb up."

"Yes, I know," she sighed. "You can climb. I did promise."

"Oh, _promise_ ," he said, scrambling ahead of her. She followed at his rear - hands ready to catch him if he fell; it wasn't a gradual slope - and they made their laborious, grueling way back to the house.

* * *

Castle carried his son out of the house early that morning, the dawn not yet broken across the flat horizon. The ocean was loud, no clouds to muffle it, and James was rapt as he stared from the perch of his father's arms.

He snapped his fingers for the dog and Sasha came at his heels, her nose up and scenting the salt air. Her fur had grown wild in just the handful of days on their island, and after a few more, only James would be able to reliably call and have her come.

Castle was grateful for the company, and he dipped his knees to rub Sasha's sides. "Good girl, good wolf."

"Daddy, so big."

"I know. It's the ocean," he told James quietly. It seemed wrong to spoil the green-tinged twilight with their voices. The sun was an hour or so away, and the darkness still had its hold on the western reach. Towards the east, where they were headed, the thin split at the horizon held portents of a pale rider on his ashen horse, where the sun would follow.

"Where?"

He came back to the world, and his solid awake son, and he gestured to the guest cottage. "There. Gotta fix it up so its habitable."

"Have it?"

"So someone can have it, yes," he grinned. Switched James to his other arm to fish the key out of his back pocket. James squirmed to get down but Castle kept him clamped tightly. "Mom needs at least six hours to be functional, kiddo. You're with me."

"Mommy."

"Yes."

"Sleeping."

"Exactly." They rustled the tall, dry grass as they passed. This summer it had all been green and sun-licked, heavy with buds and seedpods and wildflowers. Now it was brittle, and crackling like a plague of locusts.

And yeah, he heard the tone of his own thoughts. Maybe it was because he was opening back up the guest cottage, but maybe it had more to do with the nasty, taunting emails his father had been sending them.

About their son.

John Black was going to call in his favor one of these days, and Castle had no idea how to keep that man away from James.

Especially when Kate kept advocating for him.

Sasha growled at the door, and Castle echoed her, feeling the same sense of disquiet run through him. And then James mimicked them both, a perfect snarl in his throat that proved he was more of Sasha's litter than Castle's.

But it did make him laugh.

He kissed James's cheek with a resounding smack, and the boy made a face and tried to rub the kiss off his skin. Castle grinned and pressed his thumb to the spot, sealing it in.

"Ew, Daddy, ew."

"Not ew, you ungrateful parasite. For that, you're on dusting duty." He set James on his feet and pushed the key into the lock, forcing open the door from its warped frame.

James oohed and peered inside. The cottage was much as Castle had last seen it, single narrow kitchen table, two wooden chairs, a miniature range, small sink, and a lone window looking towards their house.

They hadn't been back since Colin had left, two years ago.

"Daddy, uck. _Uck._ "

Castle glanced down and saw James holding his hands up to him, grime smearing the boy's palms.

"Uck is right," he said, bending over to wipe those little hands off on the rag in his back pocket. "But don't tell your Papa that. He thinks it's scandalous we let you curse."

James opened and closed his fists, staring down at the smears of dirt. Then he looked back up at Castle, made a face.

"Too bad," Castle told him. "You're helping me."

* * *

Kate saw the boat coming from as far as the sun room, and she sat forward in the chaise and shot Castle a look.

He ignored her.

She got to her feet and went to the most ocean-viewing window and she peered through the clear blue winter day.

It was the island's boat.

"When did he leave?" she said, urgency in her voice. The book forgotten in her hand, sunglasses pushed up. The boat had been there just last night. This morning?

She turned without waiting for answer, dashed through the sunroom and wrenched open the door. The temperature difference between the solarium and the interior of the house was like plunging into a cold bath, but she ignored the goose bumps that raced across her bare arms and she headed for the bedroom.

"Castle," she called back to him, knowing he was in on this. Whatever it was.

Her father hadn't been able to come. She was certain on that. He'd planned his trip a year in advance. He had needed to be away, solitary he'd said, he had needed to think about her mother and reassess his life.

She didn't love it, but she understood.

It wasn't Jim Beckett on that boat.

"Castle," she insisted, pulling the sweater on over her head. Oh God, it was the one that James just so happened to be wearing. She _hated_ it when Castle got them damn matching sweaters.

Fuck it. She didn't have time.

She jumped into lined pants, raised her voice to a yell. " _Cas_ -" There he was, smirking from the doorway. "Oh."

He gestured and she came, and so did James from down the hallway, clutching a plastic wolf in his hand. "Mommy, you yellin'."

"I'm pissed at your dad."

"Pissed," he said with relish, giving Castle a glare.

"That's right," she said, jabbing a finger at her son's belly. "You tell him."

"Look adorable in your matching-"

"I'll cut it off, Rick Castle."

"No, you won't," he chuckled. "You love it too much. Just last night you cried out in ecstasy-"

"Your _tongue,_ Castle. Not your dick. Never that."

"Dick?" James echoed.

"Hush," they said.

"Dick," he grinned.

"Fuck," she sighed. "See what you did?"

"See what you did," he parried. "And I _meant_ my tongue, you crass filthy who-"

"Watch it. I don't want him taking that one back to my dad."

"What one, Mommy?"

"No, no," she laughed, unable to help herself. She tried glaring at Castle. It didn't work. Her indignation was off, broken. She just mostly was in love with him and that foul mouth and the way he just _said it_ when he wanted to work her up and it always got to her. "Kiss me."

Castle moved in, gripping the back of her neck, and she could've sworn she felt a brief bump of James's head against her knee before she was drowning in her husband's aggressive claiming.

Whoever was on that boat, he'd done it for her. Not himself.

 **x**


	9. Close Encounters - Final Chapter

**Close Encounters - Final Chapter**

* * *

Kate jogged down the winding path towards the island's lone dock. Reese jogged just ahead of her; she had put the security team on their toes with her dash from the house. When she had just passed the security outpost, a defensible building with most of her son's best friends inside it (despite preschool this fall, Sasha and security agents were her son's favorite companions), Reese dropped back and ceased pacing her.

Behind her, she could hear James slap a high-five to their head of security as he too chased after her, Castle somewhere farther back.

The dock was a simple affair, a floating system that they could easily adjust for tides or lack of occupancy by withdrawing it from the water. There had only been one instance in the past two years where they had needed to remove the dock, and it had only been a precaution - but Castle had reeled it in alone to prove a bet to her. She'd paid out that night, of course, she always paid out on her bets, but if she hadn't seen him work the floating system herself, she wouldn't have believed it.

The boat was still some ways off when she stopped at the land end of the dock, the rubberized plastic against her shoes. James came crashing into her legs a few moments later, heeding the rule and going no farther by himself. Kate wrapped her arms around her torso, just beginning to regret running out without her coat, when she glanced back to find Castle bringing it.

Why he'd been so far back. It wasn't reluctance, but chivalry.

She kissed his cheek when he draped the coat over her shoulders, let him help her draw it on. With the snug lamb's wool lining, the coat brought back some of the warmth she'd collected in the solarium that had leached out during her dash across the island.

"It's a boat," James said sagely.

"Yeah, it is. Want to get high?" Castle asked, withdrawing his arm from her to scoop James up. The boy tucked in right between them, hooking an arm around her neck from his perch at Castle's chest. "There we go, easy on Mom's neck."

"Mommy so fine," James promised, patting her shoulder with his hand. "Right?"

"I'm fine," she smiled, kissing his cheek. "Is that our boat, Jay?"

"Our boat."

"I wonder who's on it," she mused, watching the pack boat push through the water.

"Not Papa," James told her, as if in warning.

She glanced at him, then past him to Castle. "Does he know?"

"He knows. Of course he does. We've been in conspiracy."

"You guys both know," she huffed, narrowing her eyes at James. He ducked his head and gave her a shy smile, his too-overwhelmed-with-emotion look, and she gobbled at his ear until he giggled. "You stinker, conspiring with Daddy to trick me."

"No trick, no trick," James cried, giggling at her kisses. "Christmas!"

"Oh." She pulled up short, glanced to Castle. "Christmas?"

He shrugged, his jaw twitching at that. So not a Christmas present, whoever it was, but for Christmas.

She had a strange feeling she knew.

James's arm around her neck loosened and she stepped forward, sliding out of the shelter of her husband's windbreak. She took two steps down the dock and watched the boat maneuver their defensive pilings before coming up neatly against the bumpers.

From inside the pilothouse, she could see shadows of forms, nothing more. The sunlight gleamed brightly on the cockpit windows and threw dizzying glare back at her. When she shaded her eyes, she could finally make out three people, two detaching from the wheel and making their way to the door and now out on the deck.

She blinked.

Glanced behind her to Castle, who was grinning like an idiot, and her son, who looked completely astonished in his father's arms. His body had gone rigid, his mouth dropped open.

Guess he hadn't been entirely in on the conspiracy.

She came back up the path to them and tugged James's sweater down. "Did you see that, baby? Who was it?"

"Santa!" he gasped.

She chuckled and caught Castle's eye, and he nodded back to the boat. When she turned, she saw Mitchell escorting a fat-bellied Santa Claus off the deck and onto the floating dock.

There was something about that Santa...

When the man in costume straightened up, those crystal clear blue eyes were winking back at her.

"Colin," she gasped.

" _Santa Claus_ ," James insisted, kicking his feet to get down.

"No. Off the dock," Castle warned quietly. The boy subsided, obeying, but Kate's heart was catapulting forward, heedless. She took one step away from her husband, wavered, turned to come back. Castle shook his head. "Go, Kate."

"But-"

"Merry Christmas. Now go."

She turned awkwardly, fumbling over the way her cheeks flushed at Castle's indulgence, knowing somewhere in the back of her mind she'd spend the early morning hours tomorrow showing him just how _much_ she loved him for this, but right now, right now, she was watching Colin Hunt dressed as Santa Claus for her kid come striding up the floating dock.

She met him at the bottom and stopped short. A hug seemed inappropriate, given their history, given his always-unrequited love of her, but Colin himself leaned in. Kissed her cheek softly. The white beard tickled, made her pull away.

She tugged on the beard. "Colin Hunt," she murmured.

"Santa Claus," he rebuked. "Don't ruin it for James. Also how I managed to get out unscathed."

She gave in and embraced him, her gratitude welling up hard, choking her.

"Hey, stop. Christmas isn't a time for crying. Also you start crying over me and Richard will lose his shit."

"No he won't," she muttered, shoving on him a little. "He likes you too. Brothers."

"Never," Colin chastened, but he was grinning again.

"Come on," she said, turning now at the top of the dock towards the path. Mitchell had bypassed them for Castle, back-slapping going around, but James was standing a few paces away, between where Castle was and where they were, staring wide-eyed at Santa.

And Colin really played his part. He boomed a _Ho ho ho!_ and came forward to pat James on the top of the head.

James stared.

Kate bit her lip and slid around them, snagged Castle by the back of his shirt. Castle stopped laughing with Mitch long enough to look her way and she gestured to where James was stunned silent by the Santa Colin.

"Well, fuck," Castle breathed.

"I know."

Colin had knelt down and produced something from his pocket, but James hadn't reached out to take it. Too stunned. Too well-trained by them. Colin was urging him to go ahead, go on, but James finally turned his wide eyes to them.

"It's okay," Castle told him. "He's a friend."

James opened his hand and allowed Santa to drop a miniature carved wolf onto his palm. His jaw dropped in further surprise.

Behind them, Mitchell laughed softly. "You've just claimed the all-knowing, all-mighty Santa Claus as a friend of yours, Castle. That kid will never see you as anything other than his absolute hero."

"Thanks to Colin," she added, elbowing Castle a little for that.

His ears went red, and he turned back to glare at Mitchell, but Kate moved into the circle of her son's attention.

"Hey, wolf, here's your mommy," Colin was telling him. "See? Nothing scary about Santa."

"Oh, he's not scared. He's a little overwhelmed, but that's only because he loves you so much, Santa."

Colin grinned, apparently enjoying the role more than he'd known he would. "Wolf is from Iceland. Gorgeous there. You should take him. Kinda reminds me of this place."

Kate held out her arms and bent forward and James came running, clutching the wolf in his hand. She picked him up, nuzzling into his neck with a kiss. "Did Santa Claus give you that? He's so kind, isn't he?"

James still said nothing, but he stared down at the wolf in his hand, enraptured.

"Okay, baby. Can you say thank you and tell Santa Claus bye? He has to deliver toys to all the other boys and girls."

James lifted his head and stared at Colin.

She tilted her head towards the cottage path and he nodded, evidently understanding. Colin leaned in and patted James's back, kissed the boy's cheek. "Merry Christmas, little wolf. You're much better behaved than the last time I saw you."

James gasped.

She slapped at Colin, but it was the pot-bellied false stomach, and he was already pretending to head back down to the boat.

"Don't worry James, you've been the best boy this year," she told him, turning to put them back on the path. "Here's Daddy. Go with him back to the house." She tilted her head to where Colin was hiding, and Castle laughed.

"Right. We'll take our time."

"Castle," she huffed.

Mitchell plucked James from her arms. "We won't be that mean. Come on, Richard. Stop treating him like he's an asshole. He's only half of one."

They carried James away from the dock and she turned and went back down the path.

She found Colin in the guest cottage half undressed, stripping the beard and hat and wrapping the pants around the rest of it. He wore black combat pants and a plain t-shirt, and he looked so much like Castle for a moment that she was disoriented.

"Thanks for coming," she said. "And making my kid's day."

"Rather hoped I would be making yours," he answered, a leer in it that she knew he meant and didn't mean at the same time. "Naw, really, I had some heat on me and needed to get out. Collective thinks I called in a favor from some Czech mafia types."

"You were in the Czech Republic?"

He shrugged, offered nothing else.

She didn't care about the 'missions' he did for the Collective. "Are you okay, Colin? Is it - I know it's too much, we should never have asked you to risk-"

"It's not too much." He straightened up, finger-combing his hair back into place. He glanced around the island, the first time he'd been back. She watched him survey the place, and then she watched as it settled him, sank through his skin and into his bones.

She knew the feeling.

Colin finally looked at her. "Promise me ham and all the fixings for Christmas dinner, and I'll go back to the Collective without another word."

Her eyes burned. Her son, her son and her husband, and they needed Colin to be exactly where he was, doing what he did. Risking his life for theirs. "You've got it. I even made apple pie."

"Then, I'm yours."

She turned and led him up the path before he could see her cry.

* * *

Castle carried his tired boy away from the lights, away from the massive tree and its presents still waiting to be unwrapped, and finally down the hall to their bedroom.

He left Kate to talk with Mitchell and Colin quietly into the night, as long as she needed to reassure herself that Colin wasn't miserable, and he cradled his son in his footed pajamas and had his own reassurance.

James stirred when Castle sank into the arm chair. His dark lashes fluttered on his cheeks.

"Sleep, wolf-baby," he called softly. Kate's language of love so often became his own, though of course, hers had mimicked his in the beginning, when she'd had no words of her own. They gave it back to their son, and to each other, and to the world they had built.

James whined a tired protest, but didn't open his eyes.

"We'll finish unwrapping presents tomorrow," he promised. James had been more interested in the people than the things, pausing each time to take the gift around and share it with someone else. First Kate, of course, handing her a present and making her open it with him, squirming into her side with all his silent awe as the toy was revealed. Then the two of them had to play with it, examine each piece - _this a plastic jungle_ with plastic animals, tree-tops that opened so the monkeys and jaguars and colorful birds could nest inside.

James hadn't seemed to understand the concept of Christmas Eve presents. Or at least, not like every other kid. Not in terms of _how many do I get_ and _what else is for me_?

His kid was special. His kid liked the _feeling_ of it, and sharing in that feeling. And no matter how Kate turned her head away, Castle could see it more and more the older James got.

The more words he had.

So Rick held his three year old like a baby and loved him, because he knew his son felt it.

It didn't make a bit of difference if the kid wanted to share his toys and play with the adults before opening another present, it didn't matter that the Christmas tree still held half its gifts under those broad limbs. Because what was normal for them anyway? They were on an island with a full compliment of security agents who all felt like this _was_ a holiday for them even on the job. Her father was emotionally unable to spend Christmas with them after the last few years barely holding it together (fuck, he really hoped the man's 'trip' wasn't a convenient way to fall off the wagon). And his own mother hadn't given them a damn notice, one way or another, that she'd even gotten his invitation.

Add to that a brother who was a double agent inside the one institution that was dead set on making him and his son into a lab experiment for all eternity.

Oh, and said brother was also madly deeply in love with his wife.

So, you know. Normal wasn't exactly happening for them. He'd gladly take whatever abilities his kid managed to make out of his special blood, because they had damn well poured their blood, sweat, and tears into this boy. And all their love. So much love.

He brushed his lips at the boy's forehead. James whimpered in his sleep and his eyes came open, drugged with exhaustion. "Daddy."

"I'm here. Sleep, wolf. More tomorrow."

"Tomorrow is Christmas Day," he heard from the doorway.

He turned and saw Kate lift from the frame, step inside the bedroom. Come for them.

She sank down into the chair with them, wedging her hips in with his. Her fingers combed through his hair. "You've given us a most amazing gift, Rick Castle."

"Took a little doing," he admitted. "Colin was buried deep."

"No," she said, a slow shake of her head. Her lips touched his eyebrow. "Not Colin."

"No?"

"You, my love. You and us and this family we've made."

He swallowed hard, hadn't realized he'd needed that so much. He bowed his head forward and she caught him with her cheek, her fingers running through his hair.

"One day, James will know," she murmured. "He'll figure out that Santa isn't some impressive family friend but his own daddy, who loves so much he sacrifices everything to give us this. Not just at Christmas, but every day."

"Never sacrifice you."

"That's what makes it so good," she sighed. "You will not give up on me." Her lips ghosted his nose, came to haunt his own lips. "I love you. I love you. Merry Christmas, super spy."

 **x**


	10. Apperception - Chapter One

**Apperception - Chapter One**

* * *

 _ **A/N:** In Apperception, Kate Beckett had a baby with Castle when the LockSat stuff went down. She and Castle tried to investigate but her family's lives were threatened and she went deep undercover, alone, to save them all. Apperception opens with Beckett stumbling back into their lives 120 days later. _

* * *

The morning light is weak and frail, echoing the body it spills itself over. She's awake, as she always is these days, nightmares and wonder working hand in hand.

She wants to be well again. She wants to chase her one year old daughter through the loft and make her screech with thrilling joy as she catches her up. She wants to breathe without pain and eat dinner without feeling like she's going to be sick. She wants to take her gun to the range and find she's master of it once more.

She wants, most of all, to erase the shadows from her husband's eyes.

She won't do it by lying awake all night. Or pitying herself in the morning.

She has work to do.

She pushes her legs out of bed despite the winter morning's feeble attempts. Rick keeps the loft overly warm, tells her it's for the baby's sake - but she knows it's really for her. Her toes don't curl on the bathroom floor because the tile is heated as well, and in the shower, there are no cool gusts to come spilling over the glass enclosure. The steam collects quickly, rises and engulfs her, and she wills him to follow - just as she wills it every morning.

And just the same as it has been, he doesn't waltz into her shower with that look on his face.

She towels dry alone and wrings out her hair as best she can, scrapes it back from her face. She can't do much more than that because lifting her arms to wash her hair puts a big dent in her reserves, and she needs to stay strong for the rest of the morning. She has a baby daughter to love.

She dresses with him in mind, not to impress him, not to make him want her again - she knows he does, and she knows it's something of a curse when they're both like this. She dresses to be bland, to be moderate, to make it easier on him, the wanting. If she could be okay with gentle and easy, then maybe it wouldn't be so bad, but she's unable to be okay with that. She always sparks with aggression in bed, and he flares back, and afterwards they both lie there hating themselves for hurting her. Last week she had to see the chiropractor to align her hips once more, now that her abdominal and oblique muscles aren't strong enough to hold her bones in place correctly.

Rick was so mortified. She won't do that to him again. She has to find a way not to _yearn_ for him so hard she breaks herself. She will find a way.

She still can't find her engagement ring; it's been missing since she left. But the wedding band is here, she never takes it off.

She creeps out to the bed and down on her knees at his side, watches his sleep in silence.

When she was in exile, chasing the Dragon and Vikram's true killer, she used to want this image so badly before her. She used to threaten to break, wanting this so much. His face at peace, at rest, and then she would always imagine his eyes opening and the way he smiled when he was easy and in love with her, and she knew then, hiding in some hole in the dark, she knew then she was breaking that - breaking him. She knew she might come back and still never see that smile.

She is still waiting. She can wait. She knows patience intimately.

She kisses his elbow, the farthest she can lean without pain, and then she slowly gets to her feet to meet the day.

She has a baby to love, and one hundred and twenty days to make up for.

 **x**

When Castle wakes alone, again, he sighs and closes his eyes.

No matter how early he sets his alarm, she's earlier. She beats him to it every time.

He wants to wake, just once, and see her face at rest beside him. Study her without her studying him back.

He missed her, even as he was angry with her for leaving.

He misses her still.

He can hear Mad cooing in the living room, probably seated in the walker since Kate can't hold her for long. Breakfast is most likely on its way, courtesy of one guilt-ridden woman, and - yes - he can smell the coffee, redolent and strong.

He is so weary with normal. It's fake. It doesn't fit them - it never did. Hell, when they were pregnant, they were still chasing down LockSat. He was carrying the MadStar in the baby sling and leaving info in their dead drop for Vikram. She was still nursing Madeleine when they got their first break in two years, and they did surveillance when it turned out the baby needed formula. _That_ is their real life, that is their normal. And just because the Dragon is dead...

Once, right before they were married, she told him _don't let us get boring and stale._

Well, hate to break it to you, Kate, but we're boring and stale.

And you broke my heart.

Castle groans and rubs both hands down his face, forces himself upright. He sways at the side of the bed before he can get moving, head for the bathroom. He lifts his eyes-

He's riveted.

His coffee is - there is a mug of coffee - he has coffee.

Right here at his bedside table.

And on a napkin beside it a blueberry scone. Which she must have _made_. The folds are visible, the slump where the mixture didn't firm up exactly right - it is the very imperfection of the thing that makes it real, makes it more.

He sinks back down to the mattress and reaches for the cup of coffee and closes his hand around it. Warm, redolent with the heavy aroma of his French press. He takes a sip and closes his eyes to better feel it run through his body. Doctored with syrup and a hint of spice, either cinnamon or the cloves at the back of the cabinet.

He will _not_ cry over a cup of coffee.

It's just - he forgot what it was to have a partner in this life.

He forgot. And she's reminding him.

 **x**

There are scones every day for a week, because Christmas is growing closer and she can't let it stay like this. No words spoken except his nod and soft _thanks_ and the way he gingerly puts his coffee mug in the dish washer every time, but she can tell it's working on him.

She knows Castle isn't one to need domestication, that he has no intention of barefoot and pregnant, that he reveled in, when they first met, all aspects of her as the dominant personality, but fixing his coffee every morning isn't about who has the power here.

Just as folding the baby's laundry neatly and carrying it upstairs to put in the little chest of drawers with the purple drawer pulls isn't about who does the daily housework.

She has also redirected him away from the baby and back to his office to finish his chapter edits. She places alerts on his phone to remind to call Alexis about the latest PI case. She finds the WD-40 and fixes the creak that's taken up residence in the hinges of the front door.

She makes dinner three times before she understands that particular item on her agenda is beyond her capabilities right now, that it is more important to be able to bond with her daughter, so she calls in Asian fusion, pizza, sushi, Mexican, and finally Italian on rotation for nine days straight.

And he notices it all.

It's working on him.

She has never been one for grand gestures; she has always been about the small things of everyday life, the habits and considerations of _his_ and what he might need from her. He likes to sweep her off her feet (or he did, back when he was crazy in love with her), but she doesn't know how to plan for that, how to make the big things real.

She knows this. And she knows it's working.

Maybe one day _soon_ he will be crazy in love with her again.

 **x**

He finds the baby's pacifiers lined up on top of the kitchen counter, still warm from the dishwasher. He realizes he never told her he changed his mind about it, that the articles now say not to sterilize them but instead use their own saliva and suck them clean-

He changed his mind. And she was gone, not here to talk to, and so he quit running the pacifiers in the dishwasher where all those plastics get broken down into harmful chemicals (maybe) and instead he started picking Madeline's pacifiers off the floor and sticking them in his own mouth before giving them to her.

It's the new fad. Like having the heart monitor crib pad that sounds an alarm if she stops breathing. Like laying the baby on her back now to sleep. Like no eating deli meats during pregnancy. Just a thing. A thing they do because if they don't and something happens, they'll know it's their own fault, so they do this new thing and follow the latest advice and trends even while they're rolling their eyes a little at it.

Except she wasn't here to roll her eyes with him, and he panicked and started sucking clean Madeleine's pacifiers alone.

But Kate is still back there. Nine months ago, when they first brought their newborn home and parented her together.

And that _hurts._

When she left, he kept her engagement ring on a chain around his neck - and he has yet to give it back. He doesn't wear it; he keeps it in a desk drawer, pushed to the back, and he's ashamed.

She's right, though. They're just two room mates living politely in the same apartment. Sharing the work load.

They've stopped sharing a life.

 **x**

She finds him upstairs in the other rocker, the baby asleep on his chest, his eyes closed, tears tracking his cheeks.

She backs off, holding her breath to prevent him noticing her, eases away from the baby's room and down the hall.

The baby's room they don't use anymore, because she can't carry Madeleine up and down the stairs. The room he's hiding in, with his daughter, to avoid her having to know.

She stumbles down the stairs, pain licking at her side, real or imagined.

She broke his heart, and he is wary of giving it back to her.

She knows that. She knows.

She is _trying_.

She needs a Christmas miracle.

 **x**


	11. Apperception - Final Chapter

**Apperception - Final Chapter**

* * *

It's bitterly cold.

She can't face the empty loft yet, and with Mads in the compact stroller, Kate is free to roam as far as she likes so long as she doesn't freeze the girl out.

With numbed cheeks and nose, she winds them through the pathways of Central Park, calling out the names of things as they pass so Madeleine will hear her voice and remember her. Remind her daughter she hasn't disappeared.

Every morning when Kate draws her out of the crib in the living room - able to pick her up and nuzzle her fat cheeks for just a brief moment before being forced to put her down - Madeleine is surprised to see her mother.

And until that stops happening, until she is no longer a surprise, Kate will be the one to wake her daughter every morning.

 _I'm here; I love you; I will always come back for you._

 **x**

He gets home and unthreads his coat from aching shoulders. He met the boys at the bar and they weren't gentle with him about it. But he doesn't have any good answers, and Kate isn't talking about it.

Her suspension is up, even though her medical leave status hasn't changed. She hasn't returned to the Twelfth.

She's going to be fired if she doesn't do something about it, they said. She hasn't told him a word of this. He thought she would go back to desk duty until the doctors give her a clean bill of health. He made assumptions about what their life would look like, and he's been wrong.

The loft is lighted only by the living room lamp, and he knows the baby's crib is in his office. When she's cleared again, he expects to put it back in Madeleine's room where it belongs, where the baby belongs as well, each night, so they can all get back to a regular pattern of sleep.

He's frustrated with her; he's surly and it's not the whiskey growling in his throat either.

He hangs up his coat and closes the closet door. Madstar is a heavy sleeper except when she's not. It's impossible to know what kind of night it will be. Impossible to know if she'll sleep through or be crying every two hours. Crying for him.

And under that cry, he knows, she's crying for her mother. When he was the only one here and he couldn't comfort her. When she needed her mother's scent and her skin, her warmth and touch, the physical pheromones and prompts of Kate's body and heartbeat, and not his own.

His own wasn't the same, and he couldn't comfort her.

And so now, some nights, that remembrance of old ache, the memory of lack, that haunts them. Madeleine won't sleep, won't settle, won't have it.

Not even Kate can ease her then. Because, honestly, this Kate is a new creature, this woman in their midst. The one who returned isn't the one who left.

He's being unkind. And mostly morose. He's had too many drinks, and the boys laid into him for not knowing and not asking, and he walked home in the December bite, which shook him like a dog for thirty blocks.

He doesn't crawl into bed. He climbs the stairs and wanders into Madeleine's room and sits in the rocker, staring out into darkness.

 **x**

Where she finds him.

She climbs into his lap and lays her cheek to his heartbeat, and lets him feel her body pressed to his, the thin t-shirt, nothing else.

His arm comes around her, the other untangles from between them to join the first. His hug is weak, at first, but as she stays, it grows more desperate.

He loves her, he does love her; she wouldn't be here if he didn't.

"I'm sorry," he chokes. "I'm sorry."

She shakes her head, touches his neck with her lips in a kiss. She feels his hand against her bare thigh, feels him react.

"You're not cleared-"

"Enough," she says, desperation in her throat. "Cleared enough. I need you."

He gathers her; she's winding her legs around his waist as he shifts forward.

He puts her down on the rug, the fuzzy soft rug in the baby's room, and he peels the shirt off over her head. He's a little buzzed, she thinks, that not quite sober look in his eyes, and she wishes-

so many things.

His hands aren't clumsy though. His hands are perfect. She arches through the sharp pain, breathes when her lungs allow it. He's bared-skin in seconds and falling on her, and she twines herself around him.

Holds on through it. Best she can.

 **x**

He carries her to the top of the stairs and sets her on her feet, still wrapped in the blanket he scrounged from the hall linen closet. She shivers and comes up on her toes to kiss under his neck, but he carefully watches her as she turns for the stairs.

She's in some pain, he thinks. He also thinks she needs it to be like that. Maybe for a while.

At the bottom of the stairs, she's so busy studying him in return, taking his hand and bumping his shoulder and even a little flustered, it seems, that she doesn't notice.

"Kate," he says, and it's the first time tonight he's said her name out loud. "Kate, look."

She turns her head to see what he's seeing and her whole body steps back into him with astonishment.

It's snowing.

Silent, furious flakes in a blur of white outside their apartment windows.

He squeezes her hand and leads her forward, but only to turn off the lamp and cast the loft into a relative darkness. He stands before the windows, staring. She steps into his back and puts her chin on top of his shoulder.

"A white Christmas," she murmurs.

He hasn't done much more than collaborate with her on what to get for Madeleine's first Christmas. He ordered an ornament with her goofiest Madstar face, and the date, and then he couldn't figure out what comes next so he didn't try.

"It's Mad's first," he breathes. The snow is furious. It wants a voice but it has nothing more than shushing silence. "It's her first and we..."

"At least there is a we," she says.

The snow is howling, somewhere, howling. But beyond the glass for them. Unheard.

"I've been freezing you out," he admits softly.

"I've been thawing you," she says in return. "A little, right?"

"Not enough."

She bobs her head.

"No, I mean - you're enough, Kate. I'm the one who - who can't get all the way."

"I hurt you. Trying to save you, save our life together, I hurt you, altered our life together irrevocably."

"I forgave you. I do forgive you. It doesn't seem irrevocable; it feels like I need it, that kind of dramatics. Hey, it isn't real if it isn't epic, it's not worth it if it's not the greatest love story ever told. Right?"

"Are you being sarcastic?" She turns her face away from the snow. "I can't tell."

"I can't either."

Her eyes wander from his, a muteness on her face that hurts. Because she's hurting, because he's hurt her too.

He looks back at the snow. Tries to see meaning in the random clumps and whirling white devils. He doesn't though. Just cold.

And yet.

Some vital part of him still finds magic in all of it. The timing, the silence that howls, the white that blinds the city, even her hand in his and their fingers twined despite the hurtful things.

Possibilities.

There is still hope.

 **x**

It's a blizzard.

Not really a blizzard, but a storm that stalls out over the city and dumps a foot on Manhattan. They still have power, but they aren't going anywhere. They sit in front of the windows with Madeleine on a lap and they watch the strange forms of their city under the white blanket.

They have blankets of their own, and at night when Castle has taken the baby upstairs to her crib - he moved it up that first morning of snow and promises, and he carries their daughter, and it's better now - when the loft is their own downstairs, they find each other under those blankets in the reflection of the white and glowing silent city.

No one makes it for Christmas Eve, not even Santa Claus. It's only the three of them. Mads will never know if she's missed something by not having all the extended family; she has them. She gums cheerios at her high chair and waves at the intrepid pigeons who have ventured higher to find their perches this morning. Rick cleans her up and gives her a bath and brings her back downstairs to Kate.

Mother and daughter peel the wrapping paper off a tiny box. It's the only gift they'll open today, save the rest for tomorrow when their family can make it.

Kate has her arms around Madeleine in her lap, nuzzling those cheeks, whispering comments that make the baby giggle and squirm. The unwrapping goes too slowly for him; he wants to hurry to the good part.

The velvet box is revealed; Kate's eyes lift to his and Mads grabs for it. They both have to rescue it from her drool-drenched fingers. Kate is the one to clutch it to her chest, searching his face with a searing look.

"Open it," he tells her. "It's for you." _It's for you,_ she told him that night the snow began, accepting him above her on the rug, her mouth hot against his ear. _It's all for you_.

She opens the box. Lifts her head. "My - it's my engagement ring." He sees on her face she's been looking for it. Months now. Months he's had it, worn it on a chain around his neck, unwilling or unable to give it back to her. "Why."

He leans forward and plucks the ring from the velvet bed. Gets down on both knees (his bad one can't take it alone). Holds the engagement ring up. "Will you marry me?"

"We're already married."

"Again," he clarifies. "I promise to love, honor, and cherish-"

"Rick." She looks - close to horrified.

"From this day forth. Now and forever. As I should have done the first time I made these vows."

"You have," she chokes out, swiping the back of a hand at her eye. "You do."

"I do."

She laughs, an arm firmly snaked around their Madstar, but she holds out her other hand. He slides the engagement ring on top of the band. It sparkles like the white snow. She's crying, but smiling.

"I do too," she says. "Better than I did the first time around."

"Happy Christmas?" he asks. A thumb at her cheek to smear the line of tears.

She kisses the heel of his hand. "You're here with me, it was always going to be happy."

 **x**


	12. Misconception - Chapter One

**Misconception - Chapter One**

* * *

The alarm wakes her, though she's so bewildered by the noise she can't understand it. No concept for why she's awake in the dead of night and why her body feels crushed by a truck, and is that the alarm?

No.

God, it's the baby.

She lurches out of bed and smashes her knee into furniture not her own, still unused to this. Realizes she's reaching for her gun, and the cold sharp feeling of no weapon at hand snaps her into awareness.

Not the alarm clock, not the phone for a body drop. The baby is crying. He needs her.

She moves more by instinct than true knowledge, finds the baby in his cradle in the darkness. The darkness like a weight.

When does it get easier?

Kate Beckett has not slept in ninety-seven days.

She _has not slept_ in _ninety-seven days._

Life cannot go on like this. But of course it does.

She nurses automatically, standing in the middle of the bedroom to keep away from the lure of the bed - she would fall asleep, she would, and smother him, she knows it because she has violent awful nightmares about doing just that. Her eyes begin to adjust, dry and gritty as they are, and she makes out Castle sprawled sideways across the mattress. Mouth open and sleeping on his stomach. Snoring again. She wonders how long it's been, what time is it, wasn't she just doing this.

And why isn't he _up_ with her? All those promises about being her partner.

That's cruel. He has been; he's been awake every time, even when it was ridiculous to make them both suffer. Why should they both be sleep-deprived stupid?

She'll wake him for the next feeding. Right now, keep moving. Like a shark.

She has to walk to stay awake, striding through the loft, one palm curled at the boy's ear and her fingers caressing the back of his head.

Her little boy.

The wonder strikes her out of the blue. A punch in the gut, wind knocked out of her. She's halfway down the hall and in the deepest of night darkness, and she stares at what she can make out - the pale curve of his tiny ear, the flare of his fingers out of a fist, the dark hair.

And then he bites her and the wonder evaporates. She flicks his ear to startle him, shifts so he's not so drowsy and comfortable, and she then resumes her walk.

When she rounds the corner into the living room, she stops short. Wonder fills her all over again.

Stockings. All in a row, rich brocade, snowy polka dots, strong plaid and one ugly Christmas sweater. Martha, Rick, Kate, Alexis. And at the very end, his name in big hand-stitched print with red stripes, _Ronan_.

It's her baby boy's first Christmas this year; it's _their_ first Christmas. And here she is, exhausted and forgetful and disinterested in the whole ordeal, standing in the faint glow of the city as night-light, she and Rone, with their family's stockings lined up on the mantle.

(The mantle which Castle puts up _just_ for Christmas, because the gas logs aren't in a central location, and he wanted it to be just to the right of the tree, and he's so damn specific and eager for this holiday, and she didn't know she could possibly feel so full, as full as those stockings will be in a week, bulging and brimming with good things.)

While she wasn't looking, the spirit of the holiday seems to have sneaked up on her.

She cups Ronan's head and kisses what she can reach, the baby already asleep at her breast.

Castle is going to fill those stockings. Castle is going to wake up ridiculously early on Christmas morning, probably with the baby, and he's going to fill each one.

There are presents under the tree, too many with her name on them, and felt garland on the mantle which Alexis made as a child, and a toy train that hums along the windows and has drawn Rone's attention when he's fussy.

He said, _I'll scale it back, I promise._ But he didn't, and she didn't want to make him, and she's spent an inordinate amount of time pretending all this doesn't exist. Denying that the holidays are coming, that her mother isn't here. Still not here. The man who had her killed still out there, free, her mother gone.

Her mother is gone and now she's a mother herself, and Rone sleeps at her breast with one little fist curled up near his face, and a welt on her breast from his little gums making it all too real.

Castle is going to make this Christmas spectacular for them.

But who's going to make his?

* * *

Castle scrubs both hands down his face, tilts back towards the shower spray. Water runs in his eyes, down his back, hot needles in his shoulders, the backs of his legs. Feels good. Wakes him up.

He and Kate have been switching off feedings, and it's worked. Poor Rone is usually so tired that only his hunger wakes him, and he gives these pitiful mewling noises that _neither_ of them hear in the dead of night, not until he screams. Waking to screams is like waking with a heart attack. He's pretty sure Alexis never got to screaming because he was easier to wake (he was young then, and not an old man; he's an _old_ man, this kid has aged him).

Kate doesn't hear Rone either, not usually. He used to think that was a mom thing, some magic or hormones that triggered instant alertness, but Kate Beckett is the furthest thing from alert in the middle of the night.

It's cute. She's _adorable_ with their baby in the middle of the night, all sleep-smudged and bewildered. Two weeks into it, she held Ronan up to him with this profound confusion _what do I do?_

It was cute.

He hops out of the shower more invigorated than when he stumbled in, and he grabs a towel, scrubs his hair. Gently. Just in case he really is an old man, because she is _not_ into bald guys.

When he's dressed for the day, just buttoning up the plaid shirt, he runs into her just outside the bedroom door. "Hey," he grins, kissing her cheek. "Morning."

"Why are you so awake?" she grumbles. "How are you so awake?"

"Shower," he says, sliding his arms around her to trap her there. She squirms, trying to get free, but half-heartedly. She likes to make him work for it a little. He angles for a better kiss, lips brushing, wanting to make _her_ work for it a little too.

And she does. She unfurls to him like a flytrap, arms unwinding and twining around him, even a leg hiked up at his hip. He catches that leg, squeezing, but he didn't mean to start anything. She has work, he has a Black Pawn meeting for a few hours with Rone. "Kate," he warns.

"Your own fault." She sighs, slides her leg down, an easier embrace. "You shouldn't be so cheerful in the mornings, then I wouldn't want to have my way with you."

He chuckles, tries not to mess up her hair - but he can't help brushing his fingers through it, warm and soft, the scent of cherries stirring up.

"Rone's in the swing," she murmurs, her eyes closing. "And I'm so tired."

"Me too," he admits. "Tired that is. Not in the swing."

Her lips flirt with a smile but she doesn't give way, detaches from him to get her own shower. He flirts with following her in, decides it's not practical, and moves for the living room.

Ronan is asleep in the baby swing, rocked back and forth, lulled by the rhythm. Hands in fists, as always, ready to fight the world, just like his mom.

Yeah, who cares about practical? He's following her into that shower, even if it's for no more than washing her back.

* * *

Castle brings Ronan into the Black Pawn offices and immediately the editors and PAs descend on him. He had to take the car because the temperature outside is in the teens, so he's much later than he hoped to arrive. Between feeding Rone and the rush hour traffic just to get to the building, they are more than fashionably late. But one of the PAs, Britne, has the baby unstrapped and is lifting him to her squealing face.

Rone laughs. They're not sure yet if it's because of the sensation of flying through the air and the way most women's high-pitched noise hits him, or if it's a true laugh at something he finds funny, but at only three months, it's clear their baby is a social prodigy. He adores the people in their family, is content to be passed around; he never complains when the room is full. It's only when he's alone that he whimpers to be held.

Castle always has that pang of regret when Ronan goes out of his arms, but Britne is cuddling the baby and making him laugh again, her lips blowing a raspberry against his neck. His team of editors haven't had a lot of work to do lately, because of Rone, but also because of the thing with Smith and the file and trying not to make Kate think she has to give up her mother's case just because he got her pregnant-

"Rick?" His ex-wife approaches, a pained look on her face. "You brought the baby."

"That better not be a problem-"

"Oh, no, of course not. He's adorable." She leans forward to tickle Ronan under his neck. "He's the happiest smiling baby." She straightens and turns to him, inspects Rick critically. "Is he sleeping through the night yet?"

"Do I look that tired?"

"Frankly. Yes."

He grimaces, wishing Ronan's very existence didn't put such a burr in her side. They were never going to work - and not because he was in love with Kate even then, but because it didn't work the first time. "He was, used to," he admits. "About ten hours anyway. But then we took a quick weekend trip to the Hamptons and he didn't sleep all night and it ruined him."

"You should've brought his bed," she says, a wave of her hand to dismiss the PAs and editors back to their desks. She takes Ronan from Britne and expertly handles him. She's never had kids, and yet she's more of a natural than Kate was in the beginning. "Some babies get confused and don't feel safe, the new crib, new sheets."

Oh. Why didn't he know that? Alexis never had that problem.

"Well, he's getting back to his full ten hours," he says lamely. "But not quite yet."

"Compounded sleep deprivation, I bet," she says briskly, marching towards this conference room with _his_ son.

What can he do but follow? She's probably holding his kid hostage just to get him through the doors. He's late on the book again.

He's always late on the book, and it's _Christmas_. Can't she cut him some slack?

* * *

Kate meets her partner for lunch, surprised to find Meredith sitting at their table. The sour look on Castle's face is for more than just the fussy baby in his lap, but she doesn't say anything, simply takes the boy from him.

Apparently Castle didn't bring a bottle with him - he brought Meredith. Alexis's mother is in for the holidays and thought she could stay at the loft, but Rick is appealingly firm on that one. However she wheedles, she has to find her own place.

"Besides," Kate tells her, "the baby would keep you up."

Meredith turns, something in her eyes telling Kate it's going to be scathing, but Castle jumps in. "Especially because the guest room _is_ his room."

Meredith pouts. Kate ignores her.

The baby makes those happy sucking noises against her chest, loud enough for Meredith to turn her head. Kate drapes a blanket over her shoulder and lets the kid have at it, only a little fumbling to latch on.

Castle takes her hand under the table. Plays with the promise ring on her finger. Ignores Meredith. "Three days til Christmas," he grins. "How's it look?"

"Good," she says, feeling the tug of Rone's gums against her. Weird. So weird, still, and wonderful down to her bones. "Christmas Eve night for sure. I don't know yet about Christmas Day, babe, since I already was put on the schedule last-"

"No, I know," he says, waving her off. She can see him selecting just the right words so he won't make her more anxious. "I was thinking Christmas Eve we could do something just us?" Fiddling with the silver band on her finger, his own anxiety to please on his face.

"I really don't-" She stops short before she can finish it because she _does_ actually care. She cares what Ronan's first Christmas is like, what traditions they'll start in a few days' time. "But you and Alexis and Martha always do Christmas Eve."

"They have plans," he says. A side-eyed look to Meredith.

Oh. Meredith is doing it on purpose? Or she's just that dense that she can't see what she does to him? To Alexis?

Maybe Alexis wants to spend time with her mother.

Kate nods. "Something just us. That sounds low-key - which is good for me." She squeezes his hand. "Just be sure it's good for you, Rick."

"Oh, he's _fine_ ," Meredith cuts in. "Honestly. Like he hasn't had Alexis for every Christmas for the past fifteen years. Sixteen. However many it's been."

Kate gives her a steady look, trying not to make judgments.

"Hey, our orders are ready," Castle says, standing up and completely abandoning her to Meredith. She gives him the evil eye for that, but he waves towards the counter. "I ordered for you, see? I was being a good partner."

"Uh-huh." But he escapes to the counter where, in fact, their orders are not actually ready.

Kate sighs and adjusts Ronan, her mind on these last-minute changes in plans for the holidays. Okay. She can be flexible. She can make this work. She'll fight at the precinct to get Christmas morning at least, if she can. Christmas _morning?_ No one in the precinct is going to want to cover for her on the most precious vacation day of the year.

Maybe Sorkin? He has teenagers who might want to sleep in; he usually works nights but she can work late for him Christmas Eve and-

"Earth to Kate."

"Sorry," she smiles tightly. She doesn't want Meredith to know she's struggling with the holidays. His ex-wife can scent her blood in the water. "Ronan. Kinda distracting."

"Yes, the baby, right," Meredith sighs. She gives Kate a conspiratorial shake of her head, leaning in as if they're comrades. "Looks like he did the same thing to you he did to me."

Kate's jaw drops. "Did to me?"

"I mean, props to you for making the best of a bad situation."

She has no words. No _fitting_ words for a restaurant in public with her son _nursing_ and her partner-

"Hey, here we are," Castle says, just past her shoulder. She turns jerkily to look and she sees it all over his face.

He heard every word. And all the words she didn't get the chance to say.

But he won't look at her.

Meredith smirks and takes her salad from the tray, prettily silent.

 **x**


	13. Misconception - Final Chapter

**Misconception - Final Chapter**

* * *

They spend Christmas Eve morning together, blessedly alone - no Meredith - newspaper and breakfast and the baby all brought back to the bed. Castle gives Rone his bottle while Kate indulges in cinnamon rolls and coffee with actual cream. He could watch Kate indulge all day, the lick of her tongue into the corner of her mouth, the giggle as crumbs fall to the comforter.

Ronan slept about six hours straight last night, which feels like it deserves a celebration, and the baby is all smiles, wispy brown hair, big brown eyes. Doesn't really look like either of them; he's his own man.

"You're mooning over him," she says, laughing. She ducks and places a kiss on Ronan's head. "Sweet boy. Worth it."

"Worth the mooning or worth - well, everything else?" All their miscommunication, the months they lost not understanding each other.

"Both," she says, smiling at him. He reaches over and flicks cinnamon roll frosting from the corner of her mouth. She reflexively licks after it, catches his thumb.

A caught-breath moment, their eyes locked.

And then Ronan twists in his arms, slapping a hand into the bottle and knocking it away, and Castle has to juggle to keep the baby in his lap and out of the plate of cinnamon rolls. "Whoa, buddy, where do you think you're going?"

Ronan smacks his mouth and whines, twisting again. Kate reaches in and takes him, putting the baby against her shoulder and rubbing his back. Castle finds the bottle and holds it up - mostly empty.

"Hey, it's Christmas Eve," she says, patting Ronan until he burps. They both laugh and Kate pulls her knees up slowly to brace the baby. "Just us. What's the plan?"

"No plan," he promises. "Just us. Tomorrow is crazy enough. We can both take it easy, enjoy him."

"That's sweet, Rick." She tilts towards him, her knees braced at his shoulder, the baby cuddled up at her chest. "But a _few_ plans are okay, you know."

He grins. "Kinda hoped you would say that. I have a few ideas, if you want."

"Oh, yeah?"

"S'mores in the fire place and hot chocolate, and then head up to the roof and watch for Santa Claus."

When her face falls, he goes still, bracing himself for it.

"I-" She winces, glances down at the baby. "I, um, traded with Sorkin. I have to go in at eight, work until four. I took his overnight and he's taking my Christmas Day shift."

"Wait. What?"

"Are you mad? Oh, God, you look really mad-"

"This isn't my mad face. Why didn't you tell me?"

"That looks like your mad face. I wanted to surprise you-"

"By leaving at eight tonight?"

"Castle," she huffs. "I wanted to be here for Christmas with our family."

"Oh." He maybe was giving her the mad face, but _oh_. "Our family."

"Yeah," she says, looking shy. She glances down to the baby and strokes the top of Ronan's head. "His older sister, his grandmother. Our family. So I switched. I'll be home at four."

"At four." He's an ass, and he didn't even realize. "So I guess I did have plans. I'm sorry."

"We can still do most of that. Santa Watch on the roof until seven or so?"

"Sure. Or not, he's too little to know better," he amends. "And. S'mores are really more my thing. How about coffee and popcorn and a movie instead?"

She tilts her head, studying him as if to be certain he's not just giving in. "Alright. But don't rule out the s'mores, Rick."

"Deal."

* * *

Four in the morning is both too early and entirely too late, depending on if you're a night owl or not.

She is.

So creeping into the loft smelling like the city, still in the jeans and sweater she wore in eight hours ago, feels more like extending the night than truly Christmas day, but she's too excited to sleep.

Too nervous and thrilled and agitated and weary and-

He has always made her feel things.

She checks on her baby first, padding softly upstairs to his bedroom. Just this week, six hours straight last night, and she nudges open the door slowly enough to sneak inside without noise. Ronan is asleep on his back, both fists up near his face, mouth pouting - probably where he had the pacifier in and it fell out.

She lays her hand lightly on his stomach and feels him warm and full and content, and she dusts two fingers to his forehead in a kiss.

She eases back out of his room and down the hall, pauses before Alexis's bedroom door. Through the crack, she catches a glimpse of clothes on the floor, a fleece jacket, a pile of books - his daughter must be home. She takes the knob and slowly pulls the door shut, just in case Rone wakes crying in the early morning hours; maybe this will protect Alexis's sleep.

She goes back downstairs and stands in the living room before the stockings, her eyes drifting over their limp forms. She's glad she hasn't missed it, that he's putting it off until early morning, because it gives her the chance.

Kate scratches her hands through her hair and shakes off the precinct and cold cases, the ghosts of Christmas past, and she heads resolutely for the laundry room where she hid everything. She opens the cabinet to one side of the stackables and withdraws the box of powdered baby detergent, flips open the lid.

No detergent, of course, and it looks like he never found his gifts. She's pretty sure he would have dropped hints, or squealed, or _something_. She's the one who does the baby's laundry (to prevent him from dry cleaning everything), so she thought it might be safe, and it seems it paid off.

Kate carries the whole thing into the living room and delicately withdraws his plaid flannel stocking from the heavy hook. Everything in its place, everything just right, the cover of a magazine in here, and yet these touches still feel like Castle.

And Castle feels like home.

Kate starts filling his stocking.

* * *

She's woken only a handful of hours later, a body bouncing the bed, a face in her face. She grunts and shoves, burying her eyes in the pillow, hears his laughter.

"Oh no you don't, Mrs Claus." A hand around her ankle, a sharp tug. "You can't just _sleep_ while I have mysterious presents in my stocking."

Her grin starts without her, sliding across her face at the note in his voice, and she cracks an eyelid. "You saw?"

"I was filling the stockings and _lo and behold_ -"

She swats at him. "Don't be melodramatic." But her heart has picked up, her palms suddenly clammy.

"Come on, come on, I want to open my presents."

"Without your family?"

"With _you_. You're my family. Come _on_ , Beckett."

She groans, but it's half theatre for his sake, half abject terror. Why is she _terrified_? This should be as natural as breathing after all this time.

"Beck-ett," he whines.

"Okay, fine," she sighs, dragging herself upright. He helps, of course, an arm under her and now hustling over the side of the bed, throwing her sweater at her head where she took it off before crawling in with him.

She tugs it on and is still combing down the flyaway hairs when she enters the living room. He's in his robe and slippers, pajamas pants and flat hair, those deep creases at the corners of his eyes which she loves.

He grins and reaches for her hand, demands her closer even as she lifts his stocking from the hook. She doesn't even get the chance to hand it over before he's grabbing for it.

"Well, what do we have here?" he says. Immediately he's dipping a pinky finger under the string she attached to the stocking's loop. And tugging.

Of course he goes straight for the biggest, scariest thing she did.

He tugs again, meeting resistance from the other packages she wrapped and placed inside as - well, stocking stuffer. Dumb stuff, trinkets, the kind of things he likes, nothing useful, just mostly jokes and callbacks - suckers that taste like soap from a certain ethnic grocery store, that little elephant from her place he kept breaking all the time accidentally, the key to her old apartment because it became this whole thing, even a couple of packages of precinct vending machine gummies.

All of those are the easy things, the things that would make him laugh, special to them maybe but nothing amazing.

But he's relentlessly pulling the string tied to the loop of fabric that hooks the stocking on the mantle, pulling the string - just an ordinary red piece of thread, because she's not creative really - tugging that string until the one thing tied at the end now comes to the top.

Where it pops comically out, straight up in the air, the weight of the ring attached to the thread causing it to arc and hit him in the nose.

She slaps a hand over her mouth as she laughs, a hysterical sound, her eyes wide as Castle battles back the slingshot.

And then his fingers close over the ring and he goes very, completely, utterly still.

She can't breathe.

He holds the wedding band between thumb and forefinger and turns it in the lamp light.

She had it engraved; it seems so dumb now. _A_ _lways._ So trite and unoriginal.

"Um," she stutters, shifting on her feet. Well, here goes. There were supposed to be those little trinkets, a trip down memory lane as it were, but- "I - um - I propose-"

"What," he gasps.

She forgot the knee thing.

Oh God, she's already messing it up.

Kate drops to both knees before him, wiping her sweaty palms on her slept-in jeans. "I propose we get married. I don't want you to think I wasn't marrying you for some stupid reason of Meredith's. I know you overheard what she said to me, and you heard me not say anything back. But my answer isn't _for_ her, because it's for you, and I've said it before, but I'm saying it again, because we've proven we're terrible at getting it right on the first try: I'm not making the best of a bad situation, Rick. It's actually pretty wonderful, and I'm so glad we got pregnant. And I think we should - well, will you marry me?"

His jaw drops.

Is it good she's stunned him speechless?

"Oh God, yes," he croaks, and hauls her up to her feet and into his arms.

She's shaking all over; she actually needs his support to hold her up.

But of course she has it. She's always had it. He's her partner.

She winds her arms around his neck and clings. "Merry Christmas."

"I can't believe you proposed to me," he croaks. And then captures her mouth in a devastating kiss.

This time, nothing holds them back.

 **x**


	14. resist

**#resist**

* * *

Lily carries her book around with her inside their warren, won't release it for the world. Kate always checks to be sure it hasn't dropped, not like the stuffed elephant they lost years ago when they were forced out of the loft, fallen comrade somewhere between the stairs and the car, gone forever. But Lily isn't a baby and her mother isn't a knot of terror any more, and so the little notebook hasn't gone missing.

Kate hands Lily the purple marker and waits a heartbeat before moving back to the hot plate. She stirs the bullion cube into the beef stock, sniffs at the powdered veggies. Seems okay. Castle is supposed to be bringing back a few supplies tonight; she hopes he remembers the dried seaweed. Chinatown is usually their best bet these days, but of course he knows that.

She doesn't need to message him, risk the improvised network the resistance has managed. Risks. Everything precarious, their lives a risk.

"Mommy, what about this?"

Precious too. Lily holds up her notebook and the bright neon of her yellow highlighter has made a huge star on the page. The Christmas tree Lily has colored is far more imaginative than the pathetic thing they have set up on the battered table by the brick wall. "That's beautiful. I love the red ornaments."

"Just like the ones I made for our real tree!"

"That's right. You're a budding artist."

"What's budding?"

"It means-" The voice through the metal grate makes Lily gasp theatrically, and then the makeshift door is rolled aside. Castle stands there with the backpack over his shoulders, striped scarf wound around his neck. "It means you could flower at any moment, my warrior queen."

Lily jumps up and races for him, throws herself at his knees. "Daddy, you're home, you're home! It's been _forever_."

"No, it hasn't," he chuckles. His voice still has that raw and cracked quality to it that Kate finds both sexy and heart-breaking. He scoops their four year old into his arms and kisses her neck and cheeks. "It has been exactly two hours and forty minutes. Which is how many minutes short of three hours?"

"Twenty minutes, Daddy, I know that. I'm a math whiz."

"You really are," he praises. Even as Kate rolls her eyes. She can't help coming forward too, though she isn't throwing herself at him like their daughter. (How close she comes to doing that every time he walks back in that door is nearly too much to comprehend. How their lives have been brought to this.)

"Hey, you," she murmurs, lifting a kiss to his cheek above the scarf. He's been less shy about the scar around his neck from the shock collar, but it still holds memories of the detention center that make him quiet. A man of less words. "You're home early."

"I know you hate to wait," he whispers. "Don't like doing that to you."

She swallows and nudges her nose against his. "Did you bring-"

"I did. It's right here in my bag. Also? I have a surprise."

Castle and his surprises. He's writing essays for the Resistance who publish his work and also pay him in digital coin for his 'anonymous' accounts of life inside the detention centers. He was there nearly three years. He hasn't yet run out of _those_ words.

"More plastic?" she says, stepping back and taking the packages of seaweed strips he pulls out. "Or some of that-"

He pulls out, instead, a tightly packed warming blanket. One of those mylar ambulance thermals for hypothermia patients. "We have a date tonight," he tells her, then looks to Lily. "Up on the roof."

Kate freezes.

"Yay, the _roof_!" Lily rejoices, jumping up and down so that her pony tail swishes.

Castle grins with Lily and finally turns to Kate, hands out, face cautious and hopeful and pleading all in one. "It's fine. Marco is scouting for us. Alexis is at the clinic. We cleared the sightlines months ago-"

"The roof is so exposed," she croaks, hates how she sounds.

"One night, Kate. One."

She trembles and hates it, knows she's trembling, knows she can't let her daughter pick up on it. While Lily still thinks the roof is a grand adventure, her daughter already knows too much about keeping quiet during patrols and how to find the best salvage in a dumpster heap and where to run if her parents are taken again.

"The roof," she breathes. And nods.

The soup is burning. She has to keep busy. Not think about it.

#

Lily has set the alarm for ten o'clock, which isn't all that late for their night-blooming rose, but she doesn't want to miss it. The roof. She's gone back to her animal stories, a Christmas one, where the unicorn saves the world with rainbows that bring everyone back together in pure love.

She's such an optimistic creature, pure Castle blood, no doubt.

Kate edits Castle's latest essay to the pass the time, keep her mind off their upcoming journey. She lies on the sheet-covered couch, her feet in his lap while he rubs her arches.

And of course, his words reach her in ways nothing else ever could, a warm conviction:

 _We are reminded that Christmas is the season for peace and joy. We sing our songs, even still today, searching for that O Holy Night in which the stars finally shine again. It's alluring to put our faith in that ideal of peace on earth at this time of year, but too often we confuse making peace with keeping the peace._

 _Do not be fooled; they are not the same. Keeping the peace is what got us here - maintaining the status quo. Peace on earth requires goodwill towards men, but we have conveniently forgotten that work. There are verses to that song we don't sing any longer because their lines call out 'For the slave is our brother,' and 'all oppression shall cease.' Too many have been oppressed, too many are still in chains. This isn't the time for keeping the peace, but for radically confronting the status quo and nonviolently working to dismantle it. Too long lay the world in error, too long have we hushed our brothers and told them not to disturb our so-called peace. We are looking for a new night, a holy night, but it is not silent._

"It's a mess," he says, apparently reading her face wrong. "I know. It's all over the place and I keep jamming these lines in there that I love but which I'll have to cut. Be ruthless-"

"No, I love it," she breathes.

"I'm trying to work in the idea of the weary world-"

"Castle, it's wonderful." This man who, six months ago, wouldn't leave their warren. This man who couldn't face the idea of being put on another list somewhere, the risks, how precarious life is. And now. "It's strong."

He goes silent, as he's learned the art of, as the detention center conditioned him, as this life has provisioned them. The warren is safe, their tunnels are safe, even the building and the bar itself, those are good cover, but the roof-

The roof is exposed.

Now it's her turn to be strong.

The alarm vibrates the old phone across the table and Lily perks up, grinning at them with that sly smile. "It's ti-ime," she sings, turning off the alarm. "Let's go now, Daddy."

"It is time. You're right." He pats Kate's feet and winks at her. "You'll need socks, I do believe."

"Layers," she says, reminding Lily and Rick both. "It's twenty degrees out there, and the wind on the roof is much fiercer than you think. Even with Daddy's blanket-"

"Layers, Mommy, we got it, we know," Lily says, heading for her pallet and the stacks of crates that hold her worldly goods. Everything that girl owns fits into nine crates. She's rifling through sweaters of various colors, though her outermost layer will always be black, no color showing, and the girl knows it.

She chooses red, an impish smile tossed their direction, red just for her own pleasure. So Kate moves to their own room, sliding the panel aside, and picks a green cashmere, pulls it on over the plaid shirt she's wearing. She returns to the main room with a flourish, displaying her choice. Castle is grinning at them both.

After layering their clothes and bundling up in peacoats and scarves and heated gloves, they stand together like penguins at the metal grate that serves as the door to their warren. It's covered with a mesh of irregular pieces, mostly plastics, to make it look like a high water mark flushed detritus through these tunnels ages ago. Kate was the one who fashioned it to hide them, those early days when she had no idea if Castle would ever be alive to come looking for them, and the marked difference between then and now, between the terror of those first days and the anticipation of tonight, is nearly too much.

Castle does the honors, unhooking the bungee cords and shifting the grate out of the way, backpack shrugged at his shoulders. Lily holds back, as she must, and Kate goes first, always aware. The branch tunnel is deserted, lit only by the faint phosphorescent slime that Alexis cultivated at the clinic. _Dino_ , Lily breathes, patting the brick wall like a fond pet. Dinoflagellates, Alexis told Kate when she started the growth, _they're bioluminescent_. She was working in a lab at NYU on her masters degree when all this started and it was easy to break in since most of the liberal universities were ransacked in the early days. They feed it with a wash each week, and for a few hours after it will glow so brightly it looks like a ghost is traveling the tunnels, but it's Lil's favorite chore.

She strokes the brick and says a little greeting to Dino, their strip of nightlight, while Kate and Castle wait. Once her ritual is complete, she hooks her fingers in the back of Castle's coat, leaving her parents with free hands for whatever might come down the tunnel.

Nothing does, or has ever, and they make it to the main tunnel in short order. The air is tinged with damp and it makes breathing painful; she wonders how her husband is doing with it. His throat tends to close up in the cold, tighten in response to the hint of snow or ice, like a barometer.

But Castle leads them without pause or reckoning, his hand in hers (breaking a few rules of survival to do it), with Lily three steps behind them (following the rules, like mother like daughter). There are scuffs in the cobwebs and dirt of the main tunnel, but the wine racks and wooden shelves that line the cavernous rooms are unchanged since Castle bought the Old Haunt. During its operation, he left bottles of rum and whiskey and moonshine down here as a throwback, a bit of nostalgia. She remembers in the early seasons of their relationship going down to the bar's office with him and sneaking into the tunnels, that illicit thrill. He used to hike her up on the low table where the bootleggers must have played poker, waiting on the wagons to load their cargo, and-

Kate turns to check, catches Lily's eye - and her excitement - can't help feeling it trickle through her despite her best efforts. Secret tunnels and a night out on the roof.

Rick always _has_ known how to make the world a magical place.

"Alright," Castle says softly, barely a breath. "You ready? Quiet as a mouse, Lil."

Lily nods, not a word spoken, and Castle presses the release button on this side of the wooden wall. The reveal is soundless, and she's so glad for all the money he threw into this place, back when she thought it was a ridiculous and childish waste, which means it's well taken care of, won't give them away.

She gestures back to the girl for Castle to mind, and she goes forward into the office wishing for a gun instead of the pepper spray in her hand.

There's no one, of course, as it should be. Marco would have marked the door in chalk if it wasn't safe. Or met them down in the bootleggers' hideout. She walks all the way to the stairs just to double check, and then turns to nod to Castle.

He nudged Lily forward.

"Come here," she whispers. "We're safe after curfew."

Lily scampers to her mother's side, a mittened hand coming out to curl in the gather of Kate's coat. Castle ascends the stairs first, his boots making soft sounds on the worn wood. At the top he presses the button and the trapdoor releases with a click and sigh.

The bar is empty.

They've celebrated birthdays up here, and anniversaries, release parties and engagements, once upon a time. He wrote his books from that booth, which even Lily knows, and he tended bar for them in the early days of the resistance when no one thought it would come to detention and deportation. No one.

Kate takes his hand and he squeezes back. He tugs the pom-pom on Lily's knit hat. "You ready to go up?"

"Yes," she whispers. "I was born ready."

Kate and Rick share a smile - how true that seems to be these days, their warrior queen rather than delicate flower - and they move together for the back stairs behind the bar.

The building is good cover, a mask on the ground floor for what might be going on behind the shuttered windows and steel security plates. But the farther up they go-

the more exposed they are.

"Mommy, the stairs smell like lemons," Lily whispers, her voice hushed and in awe. "Smell it?"

Her throat closes up. "Yes, bug, it's lemons."

"I miss cherries," Castle says, just ahead of them, and it makes Kate smile.

It's colder as they move up, all this empty space because of the embargo. Storage - crates of whiskey and a ton of beer cases, another life, she thinks - and Rick trailing a finger across the tops of boxes as they pass the main room on the third floor.

He pauses and flicks at a box; the open flaps rustle. He pulls out two beers, Yuenglings, and the bottles clink together in one of his hands. He grins at her, eyebrows and all, and she shakes her head, but wouldn't mind a little buzz, if she can get there.

Lily bumps into her and it propels Kate forward, following Rick past the shadowy forms of stored liquor towards the secondary staircase. Roof access. Kate brushes her fingers towards Lily and encounters the knit hat, smiles into the girl's eyes.

Her excitement tastes like lemons.

They mount the steps together, feet off-beat, syncopated. Lily brushes against the wall, leaning, like a child will do on the stairs, her coat scuffing. No one rebukes her, nor would. The girl bounces on her toes on the top step, between their bodies as Castle struggles with the padlock. Kate draws her arms around Lily from behind, hugs the girl, both palms pressing into Lily's chest.

Castle manages the lock and the door scrapes open with a sound like a gunshot. Lily jumps and collides back with Kate, but Kate was expecting it, long unused metal and the cold and damp, and she catches her daughter. No tears, no fumbling, everything is just fine.

Castle reaches back and scoops Lily into his arms, and then he steps out onto the roof.

The night is bitterly cold, but no clouds, just infinite stillness. Quiet. A deep quiet that settles things that ache.

She stands just behind them and slowly surveys the landscape, the jut of offices and apartments, the scrape towards the sky, the incongruous images of _then_ laid over _now_.

Same as it ever was. Rooftops and city skyline.

And yet there are no lights burning. After curfew it is dark dark dark.

And cold.

Her ears widen and pop. Her throat is raw just from breathing. Lungs constrict, nose painful.

Castle whispers, mouth to Lily's ear, but it's so quiet on the roof that Kate hears every word. "Look, Lily, look up."

The sky is filled with magnanimous stars.

#

Kate feels the roof paper crunch under her spine as she shifts; the blanket crinkles. Lily is wedged between them on the bottom blanket, and wrapped in the thermal to ward off the wind, but Kate is half exposed.

The cold borders on pain. It's the same sharp knife of awareness that propelled her through the Academy during some of her heaviest swells of grief. It's the chase after a sniper, and serial killers coming back, and the timer running down on a dirty bomb.

It's the searing breaths of looking for a man who seemed to have run out on their wedding. And searching again when he was arrested and secreted away.

This cold pain is the very same brew of fury and desolation that makes anything possible.

Bold gorgeous triumph in the face of insurmountable odds. They all said she couldn't do it. She did it. She is doing it.

She loves it. And not just the still and deep cold bracing her, but the whole vast infinite sky.

How rich it is. How textured with stars. There cannot be true blackness with all this _alive_ in the night. The Milky Way is a spiraling band of galaxy so dense with stars that her eyes see only creamy light. She feels the earth rotating through her bones, feels the cold sealing her to the world, and the sky like a breathing benevolent face watching her with its many eyes.

 _Resist,_ it breathes.

Castle's arm twitches under her head and she turns to look at him, meets his eyes for a moment. His gaze echoes the feral nature of her own feelings right now, and she watches the fullness of the night in his face.

"Look up, Kate," he says, his voice sawing.

She looks up. When she does, a streak of light crosses the night sky.

Lily gasps, stiffening and sitting bolt upright. "Daddy!"

"Did you wish?" he husks.

"It was too fast," she breathes.

Kate has no words.

Silence partners them for so long that the sound of their baby's sigh is no more than a tinkling bell in the vast cosmos. And yet, as if in response, another bright point of light peels through the sky. Blink and it's gone.

"I made my wish," Lily whispers, something fierce in her voice.

"What was it?" Kate asks, just as another bright streak, lonely and brave, goes all the way east from west.

"Wow," Lily says, barely speaking as she drops back to lie between them. She takes Kate's hand in one, her father's hand in the other, squeezes and clutches their hands to her neck. "Wow."

"It's the Gems," Rick says, his voice roughened not only by trauma but wonder as well.

"Gems," Kate murmurs. Of course they are. Gems.

"A meteor shower. Every year. The Geminids, for Christmas wishes."

"What was yours, Mommy?"

Kate blinks. "I have mine, right here. I have you both."

Lily gives a contented hum; they still watch the sky for more, brief sparks burning out. "Me too, Mommy. I wished for this always. Always."

#


	15. World Anew - Chapter One

**Change of State/World Anew - Chapter One**

* * *

 _ **A/N:** This series follows the alternate universe Captain Beckett from 'The Time of Our Lives.' In my version, Beckett now has a stranger who has taken a bullet for her and knows mystifying things about her mother's murder - but can't remember those things since he's that universe's actual Castle: a not-great relationship with Alexis, Martha taking over the loft, and terrible writer's block after trying to write the next great literary masterpiece and failing. And yet that other Castle has left an impression on them both for how life could be._

* * *

"Wake uh-up," she sings over him.

His eyelids crack open, cool early morning light through the window. The captain of the entire Twelfth Precinct is perched over him, her hair appealingly loose. She doesn't smile so much as twitch her lips when she sees him awake, waking, but she does lean in and kiss his cheek.

He feels his lashes catch her nose, and it tickles somehow, the sensation of her quivering in his stomach. "Morning," he rumbles. "Where's my coffee?"

"Diva," she says, patting his chest a little too hard as she rises from the bed. Fully dressed, of course, as she always is, the heavy scent of cherry blossoms in the room. "You gonna get up, Rick, or just lie around in my bed?"

"Lying in your bed is pretty nice," he concedes, but rolls onto his side to watch her.

She gestures to her bedside table.

A coffee mug. He grins and sits up, snags his coffee. "That's what I'm talking about."

"Spoiling you," she answers, a roll of her eyes as she sits to put on her boots.

He loves the whole process of living with Kate. Her sing-song way of waking him up, snark and sarcasm as his good morning, the inevitable coffee waiting for him, then that last little thing she does to get ready. There's always one - whether she pulls the chain and ring over her head and buries it under her sweater or she sits down to put on her boots - she has a moment with him, a pause before the day begins.

"I have a meeting at Black Pawn today," he confesses, the mug cradled against his chest.

It makes her pause, that careful way she has of holding back before she has all the knowledge.

"It's about the Nikki Heat book," he says.

She doesn't so much as blink.

He puts his legs out of bed and only too late recalls his nakedness. But it gets a reaction out of her, at least, and he uses it - standing to his full height and placing the mug on the bedside table, striding to her in the chair. Nude.

She doesn't blush, doesn't bat an eye. She zips up her boot and stands even with him.

"Sales doing well?" she asks, as if he's not naked. As if it doesn't affect her. Her kiss is light when it reaches the corner of his mouth. "I hope it's not castigation. I could cheerfully throttle your ex."

"I don't know what it is," he admits. "But I've been tracking sales and-"

"You need to stop doing that," she says softly. A sudden roundness to her shoulders as she touches his hips. Her sweater is a peculiar kind of torture as it brushes his bare chest. "Don't torture yourself with that."

"Good torture," he promises, his hands looking to muss her perfect office wear, seeking the warmth of her skin.

She doesn't bat his hands away; she never has. She stands still and allows him to wander, roving until he pulls the silk shell out from her pants and brands his palms to her ribs. She looks half amused with him, half aroused, and he'll take it.

"I was talking about Nikki," she says, eyebrow raised.

"I think I was too-"

"Don't start confusing us," she interrupts. But steps into him. Her arms hook at the back of his neck, her lips are parted for what passes for a smile from her. "Stop looking up your statistics, stop reading the critics, _stop_. I want a sane man for Christmas-"

"Did you say Santa?" he gasps, mocking them both.

They plan on avoiding Christmas traditions as much as humanly possible this year, for both their sanities.

She kisses the other corner of his mouth. "You want to dress like a fat man in an itchy red suit, then who am I to question your sexual foibles-"

"Hush, you hush," he grunts. "My daughter used to sit on Santa's lap."

"Ew."

He growls but she's laughing at him, in the way she does laugh, which is not much, but her teeth catch his earlobe in reminder. She lightly spanks the bare back of his thigh in send off, and then detaches from him, already tucking her shirt back in.

Captain Beckett leaves him in her bedroom, (his skin stings only a little), and he can hear her through the apartment as she gathers coat and briefcase and her travel mug, and then the sound of the door closing and the lock being thrown.

He shivers and sinks back to her bed, still wrapped up in all their morning rituals.

If she can hold on to that mood all day, tonight is going to be wild.

 **x**

"Captain?"

She lifts her head and finds Esposito rapping his knuckles on her door.

And her boyfriend right behind him.

"You got a vis-"

But Rick shoves right inside and strides for her in a way that she hasn't seen since before he was shot.

In those short few hours when he proved a thing she never saw coming.

" _Kate_."

She stands to meet him, braces herself as he grasps her by the shoulders and smashes a kiss to her mouth. Sometimes he still does this, the flamboyant garrulous man of television talk shows and racy launch parties. She waves off Espo, who hasn't left her office doorway, and she pushes back against Castle.

But he's brimming with a manic energy she can't read. "I need you to take a breath and sit down," she says firmly.

Castle sinks like a stone to one of her guest chairs. "Kate." His eyes jerk side to side, hands come up to his face. "Oh my God."

"I don't need the melodrama, just the facts. The meeting at Black Pawn?"

He nods, his head bobbing up and down, back and forth. She sits on the edge of her desk and refuses the urge to run a hand through his hair and jerk his head up to really look at her. And then maybe smash _his_ mouth with her kiss, press her booted foot between his spread thighs just for-

"A four-book deal."

She blinks.

His croak clears up a bit. "They want a four-book deal. For Nikki. _Heat Wave_ has hit number seven on the New York Times Bestseller."

She grins.

He stares at her. The panic is all over his face, but so is a little bit of wonder.

She leans in. "You were also mentioned in the New York Times Review of Books. Favorably."

His jaw drops.

She lifts from the edge of the desk and moves to the window overlooking the bullpen. Closes the blinds. Locks her door.

When she turns back to him, his hands are on his knees like he might faint.

It's these moments of raw vulnerability that always call her back to him. Whatever version of him she met those days before he was shot, that version has never returned - and she doesn't want it. She wants him, this gold mixed with clay, her writer with the self-absorbed insecure tendencies who nevertheless has paid attention to her every quirk and need.

"Review of Books? Not the-"

"Not that. The literal NYRev," she confirms. She saunters back to the chair and finally does comb through that lustrous hair, tugging him to look up at her. "A book deal for four new Nikkis?"

"Yeah," he croaks. "Four."

"You can do it." She strokes lightly down his ear and tugs on his collar. "You look professional today. Kinda hot."

His confidence jumps right up; she can see it cresting behind his eyes. "Thank you. I do try." He stands slowly, using his smoothest moves - she knows them all; even the ones she finds completely distasteful somehow work - and he catches her by the elbows. "You, by the way, are incredible in your knee-high boots and wool skirt. Damn sexy."

"Mm?" She slides in under his jacket, teases his sides with the material of his shirt.

"Captain," he says, an eyebrow. "You prepared to be the star of four more Nikki Heat books?"

"You confusing the two of us again?"

He leans in, nose to nose with her, his kiss barely at her lips. "Never."

"That's too bad," she sighs. "Because only Nikki would be willing to... you know. Indulge you a bit?"

"Indulge me?" he yips.

She teases the shirt out of his waistband, like he did to her this morning. "Well it _is_ Christmas Eve," she answers, keeping her voice low. "And my favorite author did manage a four-book deal. He deserves a little something."

"I thought we agreed no gifts, no traditions this year?" Despite the hum in his voice, she can also hear the flicker of worry.

"We did," she answers, finds the skin just above his belt. His stomach ripples. "But this is a gift that keeps on - giving, to be completely crass about it."

"Crass? No. Crass is if I say, _I'm gonna bend you back over your desk and-_ "

"Why are we still talking?" she growls, yanking his hips into hers.

And of course, Castle crowds her back into the desk, leans past her to sweep a host of things to one side - even as she hops up and wraps her legs around his.

She loves his crazy; she's too buttoned up, she's too reserved and rule-following, and he just breaks every damn rule.

He bends her back and she goes with his tie in one fist, yanks him down on top of her.

His arms collapse, something topples, a framed photo tilts, his mouth crushes her lips, chest rubbing hers so that-

The loud crash makes them both jump. A shattering that sounds too painful. "What was that?" she says, her insides freezing. A painful cold burn in her guts. "What just - broke, Castle?"

He looks. And his face falls. "Oh no."

She shoves him off her and jumps to her feet, a difficult untangling that requires more grace than she can find. He grabs for her, keeps her from pitching into her own desk, and then she sees it.

Her mother's elephants. The little family troupe, trunks to tails, everything shattered. "Oh, God."

He holds her back, holds her _up_ , puts himself between her and the demolished family heirloom. "We can fix this."

"It's not fixable," she says. Tightness in her throat. She avoids looking at him, avoids looking at the pieces too.

He turns his back to her, crouches before the broken remnants of a thing that - right this moment - feels more important than it ought to.

She can't do that to him. He deserves better. She needs to contain this, her feelings, keep it locked down, like it always should be, _always_ should have-

"Holy shit, Kate. Look at this. What is _this_?"

Her head snaps back to him. He's crouched on the floor of her office, white dust and shards, but he's holding up a cassette tape between his thumb and finger.

"Kate? What is this?"

She sinks to the chair.

"I think it was _inside_ these elephants." His writer's eyes are dancing, sunlight on water. "I mean... oh, I see, I get it now. I just busted your hidey-hole, didn't I?" He chuckles and sits in the other chair, flipping the cassette tape in its plastic container around and around. "Top secret confessions? Ooh, no, don't tell me, it's your bedroom pillow talk from the league of men you-"

"I didn't put it there."

Castle grinds to a halt. The tape is balanced precariously on his thumb, and it teeters.

"I didn't put it there. I don't know what that is."

 _It's been with you._

"It's on your desk," he croaks. "That's what you said - that's what you said _I_ said. How in the _hell_ could I have known your mom hid-"

"You don't know it's my mom's," she says. Her voice feels wrecked. _She_ feels wrecked. "Don't do this. I don't want to do this. Not now."

"You have to listen to this," he says. "Right now."

"No. Not - it's Christmas Eve. No."

"We're not doing Christmas, remember? We talked. We hashed it out in a two-night yelling and screaming fight. My kid won't come anywhere near me on Christmas, and you were-" Castle clutches his hand around the tape. "Oh. That's what this is about? You can't handle anything at all about your mom at the holidays."

"Don't lecture me about family on Christmas."

"Don't be a wimp," he snaps. "My kid refuses to see me. You? You could-"

"My mother is _dead_."

He flashes the tape before her. "And you're refusing to see her."

 **x**


	16. World Anew - Final Chapter

**Change of State/ World Anew - Final Chapter**

* * *

Okay, that last line might have been a mistake.

Captain Beckett does this scary thing with her face where she basically allows nothing out. Total shutdown. Professional, cool, collected, unemotional.

It's very slightly hot.

Okay, it's entirely hot.

"Damn, you're hot," he says. It just falls out of his mouth. Because he's still that asshole he was before the alternate universe version of himself jumped in front of a bullet for her. But because he's trying, and he wants to be that guy, he scrambles for a better answer. "If it's just a grocery list, Kate, and you don't want to hear her voice again, then sure. I get it. Not at Christmas. But she tucked this tape into a porcelain-"

"It's not porcelain. Cheap. It's just cheap."

"Not to you. Not to her. She hid this tape, she _hid_ this tape in something that _mattered_ to her."

"I get that."

"Then it's not a grocery list."

Her face is like glass. "I get that."

"No compromises, Captain."

She does break at that, a shiver through her iron control. Her eyes drop to the cassette tape. "I don't have a-"

"I do. For notes, I carried it around before the phone had that dictation thing, but I mean, I have a cassette player. I brought it with me when I moved in."

She stares at him.

"Come on. With me. Right now."

"I... can't." She wavers, and he manages to pull her along, pocketing the tape in his jacket and grabbing her coat and his own from the back of the chair. He threads her coat onto her arms and up on her shoulders, tugging the lapels.

"You can."

She says nothing against it, but nothing for it either. She's usually so composed, her reservation their one bulwark in this unmatched relationship. She doesn't let him spiral, and he... sometimes he can make her laugh.

Castle pauses just outside her office, gestures to one of the aides. "Can you ask - nicely - for someone from the custodial staff to sweep up in the captain's office? I broke something. We're going to replace it."

The aide nods, slipping away, and Castle manages to march her to the elevator before anyone can stop them. Esposito has risen to his feet to call her back, but the doors are already closing. Espo trips a trash can trying to get to them, but Castle steps resolutely in front of her to block her view - and she doesn't even notice.

The elevator starts down.

She clutches his jacket.

When he turns, she's shaking.

He folds her in an arm and presses her to his chest. "You can do this."

It's a long trip from the precinct to her home, and every step of the way, the subway ride and the five-block walk, and the stairs because she doesn't have an elevator, and the fumble with his key in her lock - it makes the trip seem longer.

Finally inside her apartment once more, Kate stops just inside her door. He keeps going, lets her stay there while he looks through boxes for the tape player. He moved in three months ago because it was easier than fighting his mother for the penthouse, which sounds logical and unromantic, but that's how Kate proposed it.

He knows, in his heart, she wants to live with him, she wants the commitment. She just needed to couch it in terms that were acceptable to her businesslike demeanor, her sense of independence.

He has five boxes of his unpacked junk. His clothes, of course, take up half of her wardrobe while the rest are stuffed into her dresser drawers, of which she only has one remaining. Nothing about their life together these last three months really fits, not at all, but not once has she expressed frustration with him or his encroachment of her space.

And he finds that the close confines, the lack of real dimensions, has made him love her more. Somehow.

"Ah-ha," he says triumphantly, holds up the recorder. "Found it. You ready?"

"No."

"Yes, you are," he says firmly, and turns to take her by the hand. "We're doing this. Remember? Us. Together."

"It's Christmas," she says weakly.

"And this is how we'll celebrate. By listening to what your mother has to say."

 **x**

The static unravels to the end and the tape whines as it clicks to a stop.

He stares at Kate, but she's staring at the floor.

Her mother's voice still haunts the air. She sounded so very much like Kate that it's unearthly. It's possible she heard it too, how eerily similar their tones are, would have been, if her mother lived.

It occurs to him that maybe they shouldn't have played the tape at her apartment. "Have you - exterminated for bugs recently?"

Kate lifts her head.

Apparently his meaning is too veiled, because she gives him a dumbfounded look and leans forward to yank the tape player from his hand.

He gives her a sharp shake of his head, lifts his eyebrows. "Bugs. Have you seen any?"

Her snarl is cut short as comprehension dawns; she sits up straight. "I... haven't paid attention," she admits.

He winces and drags his hand through his hair. "Me either." A long look around her apartment. They've been so very careful, not taking Senator Bracken head on, not alluding to any of this within her House, keeping Esposito and Ryan out of the loop. Not a single day goes by that Kate doesn't worry over it, talking over it with him - usually in bed, while they spitball how to go about this.

And now they have proof. And a place to start to build this case.

They've never found a bug. Never a single reason to think they're being bugged. But her former mentor, Roy Montgomery, knows she knows, and his silence can only last so long before his guilt gets the better of him.

"Help me," she croaks.

"I got your back," he says immediately. "We're in this together." He leans forward and catches her hands between his, squeezing. "We build this case-"

"Not - not right now."

His jaw drops.

She shakes her head. "I can't - we have to be so careful," she chokes out. "I can't - we need to be careful. Rick. You were shot for _no reason_. Just some idiot with a stolen artifact, and you thinking you could be Indiana Jones-"

"I don't remember that," he interrupts. "And this is different. This _will_ be careful, we have been careful. I'm not saying-"

"I don't want to do this right now. I'm not doing this right now. This isn't happening." She pops the tape out and grabs the plastic cover and slides it back in, snaps it shut. "No."

"What is going on?" he says, grabbing her by the knees and pulling. She slides on the couch at his tug, but she kicks at him with a sharp boot and he releases his hold. "Come on. No. This is the _stuff_ , Kate. This is hard evidence. You can't-"

"I'm not doing this right now. You're not doing this. No."

"Kate," he laughs. The bug thing notwithstanding, he can't believe she's shutting this down. "What the hell?"

"This is all your fault," she moans.

He gapes at her. "What? How? How is you getting cold feet my _fault_?"

"It has to be - there has to be more than just punishment for the wicked. That's not enough. It's just... not enough for me anymore." She struggles to her feet and stalks away from him.

His stomach drops. "What are you saying." His nostrils flare as he stands - he has to be standing for this - and she turns on her heel, exasperation and derision in her gaze. He can't stand that. "Kate. Just lay it out there."

"I want more than _this_ ," she snarls, brandishing the cassette tape. "I want - I want everything my mother had and took for granted, getting herself killed-"

"You don't mean that," he says, hands in fists. His jaw works, trying not to grab for her.

"I do. I mean it." She swipes a hand down her face, sagging. "I don't mean it. My - _mom_. And just the holidays, the damn holidays."

"I thought we agreed the holidays don't exist," he answers. That was their plan anyway. He was willing, to keep from thinking about Alexis in LA with Meredith, how his daughter would rather spend her Christmas with a woman who could never be bothered to be a mother.

"But they do exist," she sighs. "And they work on me no matter what I tell myself. What you so - sweetly went along with."

His head comes up.

She sighs and places the tape on the ottoman that is her coffee table. "I don't want this, just this. I want you. And not just - tiptoeing carefully around our problems during the holidays, I want us to find a way to..."

This doesn't _sound_ like all his fears come to fruition, doesn't sound like this amazing kickass woman finally coming to her senses and leaving his sorry ass. No. It sounds like Kate taking a stand for something, no compromises. The Captain of the Twelfth showing him all of her soft needful sides.

"Find a way to what?" he asks, releasing his fists and taking a step closer.

She blows out a breath. "Have Christmas with me. I mean. It's too late for presents, unless we unwrap each other-" She gives him a flicker of her usual intense sensual flare, and a self-deprecating smile. "But it's not too late to make something new."

"New?" he croaks. "You want - to get pregnant?"

Kate gapes, cheeks flushing bright red. "What?!"

"No, I mean - shit. Yes? No. I just... new life?"

She slaps a hand over her mouth but it's too late to stop the giggle. He moves helplessly towards her, wraps her in his embrace, holding them both upright. She groans and smacks the back of his shoulder. "You're such an asshole sometimes."

"What did you mean then?"

"Us. I want us. To be a family." She growls and crushes him closer, her nose bumping his jaw, back to his ear. "You make me sound stupid."

"No, you're not stupid. But - weren't we already?"

Her head pulls back. "Were we?" She strokes a hand down his cheek. "I don't want us to be a thing that happened because you saved my life, or because I made something up in my head that wasn't real. I want us to be a thing because I love you, and you love me, because we're together in this life. Not just for my mother's murder, but for real."

"This is real, Kate. I promise you that." He touches a kiss to her mouth. "But your mom's case - that's important to me too. That's real, and a part of our lives, and I want us to do together."

"But not at Christmas," she husks.

"Okay," he says easily. "Of course. Not at Christmas. We'll focus on - what did you call it? - unwrapping each other."

"And new life," she murmurs. "Together. Not pregnant. Oh God, not pregnant, Castle, you do realize-"

"I do," he laughs. "No babies, Kate. Not yet anyway."

Instead of the indignation he expects, she shivers.

Which he totally wasn't expecting.

"Merry Christmas," she whispers at his ear. "We'll talk about not yet. My gift to you."

 **x**


	17. Scratch and Claw - Chapter One

**Scratch and Claw - Chapter One**

* * *

 _ **A/N:** The story Scratch and Claw is about Castle doing everything in his power to stick with Kate in DC until his daughter is hospitalized on an overseas trip. Castle knows he has to fly out and get her, but he's surprised when Kate shows up to go with him. Kate promises Castle only two years more at the AG's office - whether or not she solves her mother's case._

* * *

Kate spins the ring on her finger as she listens in. The AG's conference room door is closed to prying eyes, but not sharp ears, which is what hers have become over the last year and a half. Plus, their voices carry and her desk is now in this restricted section ever since her big terrorism case a year ago. She has access, and she has evidence, and if this goes her way, then she's kept her promise to her mother _and_ her promise to her husband.

Two years, she told him. Two years and they would either be testifying before the grand jury or moving back to New York. She has a train to the city in five hours, so really, this is it. This is the end of line. She might have six more months, technically, but if this doesn't do it for her boss, then she doesn't know what will.

She took a gamble on Stack's integrity. She hopes it pays off.

The diamond in her ring gleams in the overhead lights, helps focus her eavesdropping. _I think you're overestimating... she does have an impressive field... these are premature-_

She can't hear every word, only snatches of phrases and the deep timber of Stack's voice. His boss, the two senators on their oversight committee, the woman from DoJ, the woman from Secret Service, and Stack.

But not Kate herself. Despite her agent status, she's not high enough to see this through. It galls her, does it ever, but this is how the Attorney General's office works, and she's had to learn her place.

Kate checks her watch, her father's watch, and wonders if McCord and her team have come in yet. She scoops up her phone to read her alerts and finds an encryption from Castle. It takes a few keystrokes more to access the message, plus a code, but it's worth the certainty of security.

 _End of the line?_

She blows out a breath, messages him back: _Still in there. But for me it is, for us. After this, McCord and her team can carry the ball. If they don't agree, it goes up the chain from here._

She wonders if he knows just how difficult that is to write, if he understands how much of herself she's leaving behind in that conference room right now.

Would her mother be proud? Or would Johanna Beckett be disgusted that her daughter is shirking her responsibilities?

She used to say, 'Don't expect others to do what's right when you won't either.'

The return message from Castle is immediate and decrypted before her stinging eyes _: They'll agree. And if they don't, we will take it up the chain ourselves. I don't care about your timeline; this is our baby; this is right._

* * *

McCord finds her before the BMW - the wall of monitors and feed sources from all across their various open operations which they call the Big(ass) Monitor Wall.

AG's office isn't big on creativity. Castle was appalled when he heard it, and then of course, completely enthralled by every last detail she could give him about her work as a Special Agent.

McCord's eyebrow lifts. "What's that look for? Did they-"

"No, nothing yet. I was-" Beckett waves a hand towards the exit. "You know."

McCord smirks. "He really has infiltrated your every waking thought, hasn't he? Maybe if that's how my two previous marriages had worked, they wouldn't be previous."

"You'd be a bigamist. Which is illegal in DC and most of the fifty states."

"All. One would hope," McCord answers. Another Mona Lisa look her way. (Mona Lisa is how Castle describes their ally in this endeavor; he really has infiltrated her every thought. It would be disastrous if it didn't make her such a better agent and investigator.)

"He's fine with it," Kate answers the look. "And anyway, I'm on that train in... three hours no matter what." She adjusts her watch, the clammy skin beneath the metal where it sticks. "They've been in there two hours."

"I heard." McCord shakes her head. "You're going to quit, aren't you?"

She keeps her eyes on the wall. Monitor after monitor, the sheer volume of resources the AG's office has, the abilities she can bring to bear on a variety of issues. "No." Is she? "I _am_ asking for a reassignment."

"The New York field office," McCord guesses. Hardly a guess, at this point. "I figured. It's all anti-terrorism, and after the Seven cell you brought in, you're practically gold up there."

She had help; she had Castle. But no one knows that. "Pays to keep your eyes open even on vacation," she says, twitching her lips to McCord.

"Pays to have a partner," the woman answers quietly. She must know that Kate had Rick's help in that one. But they'd been highly motivated.

"Don't think that wasn't in the back of my mind," Kate admits. "When we - I - brought in Seven-"

"-and so spectacularly-"

"-the New York field office was paying attention. And yes, the spectacular part was calculated. His idea, actually."

McCord knows she isn't talking about the leader of the New York Seven cell, no. It was Castle's idea to make it impossible for her to be ignored. The street cred is hopefully on her side in that conference room, giving her accusations and evidence the gravitas she might have had presenting it in person.

"We'll see," McCord says finally. A flick of her wrist has her catching Kate's sleeve in one of the woman's few sympathetic gestures. She plays her cards closer to the vest than even Beckett. Though that might also be Castle's influence: the mellowing of Kate Beckett.

"Thanks," she says, because McCord has been an asset, and sometimes even a friend.

"Finish this up," McCord says, gesturing to Beckett's open terminal. "And then get on that train, Agent. No matter what."

She nods. She will; she doesn't have to be ordered to.

And that's Castle's influence as well.

* * *

She's on the train with her forehead against the glass when Castle calls. Her phone is in her hand, her chin resting on top of its case, so she feels the vibrations deep in her jaw.

She answers quickly, a breath that is his name.

"Hey," he says, warm despite the distance. "You made it."

"I did."

"No result?"

"Not when I left," she says lightly. But she knows that _he_ knows it's a sore she keeps picking at.

"And nothing on your channel?"

"No, nothing," she sighs.

"Alexis brought a few friends," Castle says. She can practically see him wincing.

She can handle it. "That's okay. I figured it wouldn't just be us."

"I wish." His sigh is deep, and it betrays the weariness he must feel after everything. They spent most of November and December racing against the clock, getting into and out of scrapes, hunting down the last of this crazy file Montgomery put together once upon a time. They had a bomb go off practically in their faces, in _his_ , and he still has scars on his back where the shrapnel tore through his jacket while he covered her.

 _Would have shredded open your throat_ , he always says. Lanie was the one to doctor them that night; he's only repeating their friend's own words. But the way he always says it, the stone-still darkness in his eyes.

Once, on a flight to Costa Rica, Castle offered to take care of everything, exact a final vengeance, a vigilante justice. And it was that same look.

She won't take him up on the offer. Ever. She won't be the cause of making that look permanent.

"Hey," she says, rousing as she realizes the silence has stretched on too long. "It will be heaven just to see you. Face to face again."

"Yeah. We'll have to sneak out for any real fun, but-"

"We're used to sneaking around," she smiles.

"Is Rachel going to call you when they decide?"

"She said she would text," Kate admits. "But I'm coming home, Rick. No matter what. I'm on this train and I won't turn around."

"I've never doubted."

 **x**


	18. Scratch and Claw - Final Chapter

**Scratch and Claw - Final Chapter**

* * *

Rick waits at Grand Central for his wife. Detective, badass, girlfriend, investigator, Special Agent, partner. Kate. Lately he's ruminated on the ways and means of their life together, and how they got to this moment, and how it might go for them after.

After... her mother's case is finally closed, their life together is in the same city once more, her restlessness is appeased, his book sales taper, they sit down and breathe and really look at each other. Not that those things will happen; he's looking more at worst case scenarios really. But they might.

Never know.

He waits in the vast grand hall - the Grand part of Grand Central - the ornate clock sweeping towards reunion. It's strange, a kind of full circle symbolically, since it was in Grand Central that they first saw the Seven cell member and followed him out, which led to them breaking open the terrorism case, which gave her the authority and clout to get Stack on her side for the Bracken investigation.

Castle himself was the one to spot the man; he'd been sneak-reading her updates from the New York field office for months at that point, but of course she kept him out of the official report. A chance encounter, meeting her husband for a short weekend trip in New York, and - just as any good agent would be doing - keeping her eyes open.

And now he's waiting for her once more, their designated meeting spot just past the former ticket island. His eyes wander to the clock and then down, over the crowd, people watching just as he was that day too.

Maybe he can't turn it off any more than she can.

A man in a fedora and trench coat, a throwback to older times, roaring prohibition and secret tunnels behind the best bars in the city. Rick's mind churns out half-stories, possibilities, legends - an interesting mixture of the writing craft and the spy craft he's learned at her side.

Weird, because Fedora is so out of place as he leans against the wall, checking his own watch and not the huge clock. Just past him is a woman in a fur coat, has to be faux, if Rick's eye is discerning at all, and the two oddly go together. They're not, of course; they're a healthy distance away from each other. But the image they would make together is alluring.

New York City offers a cornucopia of cultures and personal identities, and while a fedora and a fur coat aren't entirely common, they're not unlikely. Nothing seems unlikely in this place, anything is possible.

Even Kate Beckett coming back to him for good.

She's quieter and sneakier than even _he_ knows, because she's at his shoulder with a chuckle in his ear and an arm sliding around his waist. He half turns and grins at the relief on her face, embraces her whole-heartedly.

She squeezes. "Hey, babe."

"Hey, yourself," he says, already nosing down to kiss her neck, her collarbones, burrowing deeper into her coat.

She laughs sharply, smacks at his shoulder. "Public, Rick."

"Kinky, but sure, let's."

She laughs again, curving an arm up along his neck and the back of his head, mussing his hair for it. He pulls away to fix his hair, narrowing his eyes, but they're both smiling of course, smiling and beaming and soaking each other in.

He takes the bag from her shoulder and puts it on his own, takes her gloved hand. She tugs out of his grip to yank off the gloves, shoves them in her coat pocket to take his hand once more.

"Want to-"

Before she can say _go_ , Grand Central erupts.

They both drop, crouching, ready to spring into action. Her hand on her private holster, his fisted in her coat. He's scanning the station for the source of the cacophony, and only after too long a heartbeat does he realize it's the sound of music.

The actual _Sound of Music_.

"Favorite things?" Kate says, and stands.

He follows, adjusting her bag on his shoulder, his eyes darting wildly for the source-

 _these are a few of my favorite things!_

"What?" he croaks.

"Oh, God," she gasps, making his chest clench. "It's - look!" She grabs him roughly and turns him around, and now he's looking back at the vast open space towards the glass doors, the clock, and the strangers he noted before.

Fedora and Fur Coat have been joined by a handful of others, lined up in regiments across the marble floor. The music booms from Grand Central's own PA system, especially loud where they are, the speaker on the information booth crackling with volume.

The music swells, and the uniform lines break, each person falling towards another, and caught - caught by what he thought were passengers standing there staring. Now part of the movement. The regimented lines become double their original number, and now twenty people are marching, no, _dancing_ -

"It's a flash mob," Kate laughs. "Oh my God. For Christmas."

The music is a remix from the famous movie, the twenty or so members of the flash mob are dancing in a wave across the floor, synchronized, flawless. Like a finely tuned machine, one by one they move towards some orchestrated culmination.

The lady in fur spins in a ballerina's poise, the fedora-hatted man does a Gene Kelly-kick, the next in line takes up the movement, each reflective of a personal style reminiscent of the best of those old musicals. As one the wave comes back, and Kate laughs as the dancers slide-step and plie, shuffle step and turn.

They watch in stunned silence, the members of the troupe spinning around each other, the movements more intricate, the song gaining momentum. The crowd around them grows bigger, people pulling out their phones and recording, kids and adults laughing, stopping with strangers to watch and comment. Kate leans in against him, up on her toes, her neck craning, delight beaming from her.

He watches her almost as much as he watches the flash mob. Her hair pinned back for work, tendrils around her neck where it's falling, her ears tilted in that adorable imperfect way. She turns and shares her grin with him, leans in to point out a little girl who is apparently part of the production, and they watch together as the girl climbs onto a bench and does a soft-shoe.

It's the Charleston for the climax, arms swinging, legs moving fast, the taps multiplying against the floor. The whole mob spins to the center where that lone little girl gives a solo performance, cute and impressive, and then jumps to the floor.

The music ends abruptly. The dancers droop like puppets with their strings cut. There is a moment of absolute silence, and then the watching passengers of Grand Central Station erupt into applause. Whistles, catcalls, broad clapping, laughter. The dancers lift their heads with the biggest grins, but they calmly collect their suitcases and bags, their coats and umbrellas, and they leave the main floor in singles and pairs, disappearing through the crowd like it never happened.

"Wow," he chokes out, turning to watch the little girl, her hand in the fedora-hatted man's. "Stunning."

Kate winds her arm through his and presses her body so close that he's astonished, his eyes startling to her face. Joy blooms in pink roses on her cheeks, green moss in her eyes. "Rick."

He startles. "Did the AG's office text you?" he gasps. "Are they-"

"No, no," she shakes her head, her hair tossed, chestnut and warm. "No text. I just-" Her words fall to nothing, her face brimming, and she throws her arms around his neck and presses a kiss to his mouth. "I just love you."

It echoes in the cavernous space. Outside and in. He cups her jaw and runs his thumb along the strong edge of her bone. "I love you too."

He was trying to think of a word for her, for this, the myriad names for her he carries with him depending on the day or duty. But all he needs is one.

Kate.

It doesn't matter what the AG's office says. This is their life together.

 **x**


	19. Frog at the Bottom of the Well - One

**Frog at the Bottom of the Well - Chapter One**

* * *

Kate stood at the edge of the dock, the ream of staple papers flapping in the wind, threatening to fly into the lake. The manilla envelope escaped, and she let it go, not caring to chase it down.

But it came back to her, plastered to her leg by the wind. A heartless, numb moment where she couldn't even reach for it, and then she finally found the strength to bend, catch it. Her name was typed on the label, her address the precinct. He hadn't even done it in his own hand.

Beckett wrested her eyes from the lake and stared down at the divorce papers. The bright pink post-it note _was_ in his handwriting:

 _No prenup means you can have whatever it is you want from me. For once, Beckett, let me give you something, free and clear._

No prenup. It had, twenty months ago, occurred to her that he probably should. But nothing she'd done had convinced him of the logical route. _No prenup, not with you._ That look on his face then that now he never had anymore. She'd driven that look right off his face.

Fights had been one thing, the silence those last few months before their separation - much worse. She had not known Castle could be silent. Unresponsive.

Done.

Done with her. And her broken promises, her hot and cold, her secrets and hiding, her obsession.

Kate swallowed and sank down to the cold dock, worked the top off her beer with the metal end of a mooring. Something chipped off the neck of the bottle, but she didn't bother to care. She took a swig anyway, felt the shard cut the corner of her mouth. A deep slice.

The burn of alcohol brought tears to her eyes, and she was grateful. First time she'd been able to cry in months.

Beckett pushed her boots to the end of the dock, letting her feet dangle precariously close to the cold water. Her spine was bowed, shoulders rounded, and everything hurt. Badly. Worse than being thrown off a roof.

She should never have... what?

Said yes? Taken down that wall?

After LA, and her former training officer's raw letter, she shouldn't have let a vulnerable moment cut her so badly. She shouldn't have shown her then-kind-of-boyfriend that interior pain and weakness, shouldn't have started down that path. Kissed him in February, shot soon after LA, and the rebuilding work had been hand-in-hand with the demolishing of that wall.

That Christmas had been her first _I love you_ , and he'd proposed at the new year. They'd stayed at his apartment fostering a beautiful golden retriever, working out all those little things about who did what, which parent made dinner, who worked late and who saved the day. It had made them too confident, made them think they had this down.

Married in Atlantic City at the end of February, when she'd spoken in his ear the same words she'd said when they'd started all of this:

 _It's supposed to be everything, Castle. Don't take less from me._

And he hadn't. He had asked for everything.

But she hadn't been able to give it.

He had asked her to step back from her mother's case, to _stop_. She couldn't stop. He should've known that, should never have asked for the impossible - that way he wouldn't have gotten the answer he didn't want.

All she had now for him was one thing. A signature at the bottom of the page.

* * *

Rick Castle tilted his head back in the darkness of his office, watched the thunderstorm outside the windows. The rain obscured the Christmas lights across the way, made everything run red and green. Lightning flashed, much like it had that night she had nearly died.

Ryan had been the one to tell him, coming over to his place the next day, looking for Beckett. The sniper had come after her hard; she'd nearly been thrown from a rooftop. Bruised ribs, probable internal bleeding, she hadn't let the EMTs take her to the hospital. Ryan hadn't been able to get a hold of her that night, and so he'd shown up at their home.

Of course, by then Castle had already figured out that his wife wouldn't be coming home. After months of silence and frustration with how easily she could kick him out of her life, Jim Beckett, of all people, had come to him and asked him to save her, _be that one last reminder, standing right in front of her, that the grief is gonna swallow her up, Rick_.

Jim had been talking about that old Christmas tradition of his, the live evergreen at his cabin which he had planted a long time ago to encourage his sobriety. Kate had told Castle that story the Christmas after she'd been shot, back when things had seemed to be changing for the better, when she had made all these amazing promises - and he had believed in them.

At her father's urging, Castle had determinedly headed over to her old apartment, clutching at the idea of those promises, the way she had looked at him that night they had bought their first tree. It'd been May then, but he'd had the _hope_ of that Christmas buried so far deep inside his heart that he'd truly believed in miracles.

Except he hadn't been that reminder. They had fought, as they had so many times before, standing far away in her old apartment (the one _he_ had found for her, convinced her to keep, so long ago now). They had fought and she had called him nothing more than the bully on the playground, and the problem was - that was true.

That was how he loved her, how he showed his love. He arranged things, he made decisions for her, he took it upon himself. He surprised her with gifts she had never wanted, an apartment she couldn't say no to, furniture she hadn't been able to reject. He _was_ a bully, and he knew it.

He wanted to bully her into life. But she wasn't having it.

"Dad?"

He roused from his dark thoughts, ignoring the hesitance in his daughter's voice. "Yeah, I'm in here."

"I picked up the mail," she said, cautious. But she came on inside and turned on the desk lamp, frowned prettily at him. "Here. I think Gina sent the book edits over. This one is pretty thick."

Castle didn't especially _want_ to work on the book; it made him miserable to take out his pain on Nikki Heat, and yet he couldn't seem to write it any other way. But he dutifully reached for the packet and pulled it towards him.

Except it wasn't from Black Pawn. It was from Poldark & Associates.

Kate's divorce lawyer.

He cleared his throat and placed his hands over it, but Alexis caught the return address before he could mask it from her. She crossed her arms over her chest. "Open it. I want to know what she took from you."

Nothing.

He already knew that answer. But he gave way to his daughter's relentless support and he peeled back the envelope's tab. It came apart cleanly, and inside the mailer was the thick sheaf of papers he had already signed. Papers she had told him to draw up, _if you can't respect my choices._

The smell of the lake came out with it. Wet and cold. It was a melancholy scent, damp and wrinkled, a reminder of how easy it had always been for her to leave him.

His post-it note plea was still on the front page. He hated to look at it, how weak he'd been begging her to take _something_ from their too-short marriage. How much more pathetic could he be? _Please let me have some kind of effect on your life._

But just as he gripped the curled edge to yank it off, he saw her handwriting in between the lines of his own: _all I want is the chair from my old apartment._

His head swiveled to the chair in question. She had moved it into his study; it was right in front of his desk. She used to work on her laptop on that side while he wrote on this one. The one of a kind chair he had forced her to accept from him, which she had nonetheless paid for in modeling photos for the designer.

Of course she wanted the chair. It was-

 _Everything they were._

Wait. She wanted the chair?

 **x**


	20. Frog at the Bottom of the Well - Final

**Frog at the Bottom of the Well - Final Chapter**

* * *

Beckett stayed out for as long as she could.

The winter woods were barren at first light, made of hoar frost and dead things. But trekking deeper in duck boots and lined pants, her father's old coat adding bulking against the wind, hands in her sleeves, she managed to see what at first had been unseen.

Like faith, the woods awoke for her, geese calling in ragged formation, the flick of a deer's ear as it stared her down, something with glowing eyes that slinked away into shadows too deep for her to penetrate. Smaller things revealed themselves as well, things afraid of her tread: the grub worms burrowing away from the over-turning of a rock, the squirrels skittering through dead leaves and along fragile limbs to chase her trail, the strange-eyed gnome owls watching from the hollows.

And the birds. _The birds... are the keepers of our secrets_ , the song hummed in her head. She watched them fluff their feathers and take off like a shot from the limbs, dive to the forest floor, circle each other, hop from branch to branch, closer and closer. Keeper of secrets, she could see why, as they cocked their little heads and waited on her, fluttered off to wait again. How many things had the birds overheard, how many nasty fights and brutal arguments, batterings behind windows, fury up the chimneys.

She was in rare form, the tone of failure like a note from a bell struck.

She headed back to the cabin at last light; she had not taken her phone or a flashlight, she had, she knew, wanted to get lost. But not enough to be suicidal. She hiked back through the hillocks and burns, the depressions and wash-outs, keeping the sound of the lake on her right hand so that she wouldn't get turned around as she lost the light.

The woods fell quiet and dead again as she approached the cabin, gloom lengthening the shadows.

But when she arrived, the cabin itself was glowing like a beacon, warm light spilling from the back windows.

Her father must have come for Christmas, she supposed. He had been threatening just such a thing in texts all week, and when he hadn't reached her today-

Well, this was her punishment. The two of them slogging through the holidays. He must have known she had bought too many bottles of red; the grocer must have called him with that tentative nosy warning.

Kate sighed, rubbed at her forehead as she approached the kitchen door. She had wanted a little misery, a few days to wallow, to really _feel_ what she had done to herself, what she'd reaped.

Grief still clung to her like the night.

She opened the back door and flexed her chapped, numb fingers, wincing at the bite of ache in her bones. She should have brought gloves. And her phone. And a flashlight. She should have given care to herself - but why start now? She had lost her marriage because of it; she wouldn't attempt to do better alone.

"Dad," she called. "I told you not to come." She unbuttoned her coat with painful fingers as she crossed the kitchen, doing a double take at the copious food piled on counters and the table. "What did you-"

She was struck dumb in the doorway, the living room open to her view.

In the front picture window, a massive Douglas fir was winking merrily with multi-colored lights. The living room was richly warm, a roaring fire in the fireplace that gave off heat and light and danced in the reflections of the ornaments hung from the tree.

A Douglas fir. Like the one she and Rick had-

"Castle," she croaked, stiffening as he stepped into view.

"I took a chance," he said. "Brought it with me."

Her eyes darted to the tree, and they were _her_ decorations, and his, the things they had chosen together from her parents' old supply, the things that hadn't gone up in flames in her old apartment because she had never wanted them near her and so they had been stored away (never to see the light until him, until _he_ made her alive again). Her mother's bright glass ornaments, the silly drooping star, even the tourist ones they'd picked together on the vacations he had managed to kidnap her for. Everything that had been theirs.

Once.

"How... why?" She stepped back, crossing her arms over her stomach to hold herself together.

"Like magic," he husked, his face turning away from her. Towards the tree. "You said, a long time ago, that your father always got the tree and set it up in the window and it would just be there when you woke-"

"Like magic," she whispered. And it hurt, it hurt, it was a punch to her gut that had her hunching. "Why are you doing this to me?"

His face fell, real emotion she hadn't seen in months. "I... got the divorce papers."

"I signed them," she said tightly. Her ribs were cracking apart.

"You asked for the chair," he mumbled. "And I wanted... you to have it."

"Okay." She tensed, waiting for a blow he was all too good at. Words; he was too accurate and cutting, every time. She had no defense.

He reached back and yanked a thick sheaf of papers from the pocket of his jeans. They were curled up at the edges, rolling inward, but she could still see that angry post-it note with its accusation.

She had promised him everything. She had never measured up.

"It smelled like the lake," he said, tilting the pages. "And you wrote to me - you asked me for the one thing that was... ours."

She gripped her elbows, stared at the papers as they waved and curled from his hand. "I - thought a lot more than a chair was ours." She closed her eyes. "But in the end, I guess maybe not."

"I don't want this to be the end."

Her eyes flew open, ice cracking in her chest. "You have the _end_ right there in your hand-"

He chucked the pages into the fire.

Her jaw dropped.

Castle strode forward and halted mere inches from her, his mouth in a dangerous line. "I don't want it. I want you. I want our marriage back, the one where we keep _trying_ even though we're at odds, the one where two worlds collide-"

"No," she scraped out. Cold terror was a fist around her throat.

"Wh-what?"

"How - you just - you were the one who said-"

"I was furious. I was heart-broken. I felt like the last idiot to be picked for the team, and somehow it was for the other team, never yours."

"Are you saying I _never picked you_ -"

"I'm saying I made a mistake, and we had a fight - we had a _fight_ \- and somehow that turned into forever."

She stared at him. "We had a fight and you turned it into an ultimatum, you or _justice_ and I could never-" _pick you._ She choked back the last words, but they were there anyway, and her body felt as battered and wrecked as it had that night in May when she'd lost the fight to a hired killer and nearly died wishing it was Castle up there to save her.

But Castle couldn't save her. The NYPD had come in on their white horses and pulled her to safety and then she had wandered for hours in the pouring rain with no direction. None. She could not go home broken and defeated, so close to the answers she had needed to finally be able to-

give him everything.

"Kate?" Hands opened up to her. "You don't have to pick me but the once. Just the first time. And you did, that once, a long time ago, but somehow I... forgot. I forgot that you gave me everything in that one promise at Christmas-"

"Rick-" Her head bowed forward, shame closing her eyes. The heat of the fire at her shoulder. "I have done a miserable job of keeping my promise to you-"

"No, you haven't." His hands cupped her face, more heat and warmth than she felt from him in months. "I got scared. I thought you were gonna get yourself killed, and I couldn't stand by and watch." More touch and life than she'd felt from him in so long. "Don't cry. I'm the one crying. God, Kate. I made a mistake; I gave up. But you told me from the beginning that it was going to take time-"

"Why should you have to wait?" she cried out. "You're the one with magic and all I bring with me is death."

"No, no, you're the most passionate, intense, frustrating, stubborn woman I've ever known, and I don't want to miss out on any of it just because I'm equally stubborn and frustrating."

She choked on something that felt hysterical, laughter popping up through her chest, desperate and pained. "Castle."

"Can I just - can we just try? The cabin for Christmas and just - try to find the magic again, try to forgive the hurts-"

"Shut up," she muttered, crashing into his body. His arms embraced her like reflex, and she clung to his sweater, her heart pounding so hard she couldn't hear a word he said. She gritted her teeth to keep from crying, pressing her face to his neck, the sharp scent of his aftershave a kick in the gut.

He gripped the back of her neck, wound her hair in his fist. "Kate. Kate. I'm not trying to bully you here, but is that a yes?"

"Yes," she choked out. "Yes. I'm so sorry-"

"No more sorries. I want the damn chair to stay in the office where it belongs."

"Is that supposed to be some kind of symbol of something?"

"You," he croaked. "Me. Our relationship. Partners, not sidekicks."

Even though those old arguments sparked to life at his words _then why didn't you stay with me, then why did you try to make me stop,_ she crushed them as she crushed him, her arms as tight as her eyes were closed, as if to ward off evil.

"Oh, shit, the paper clips are melting in the fire place."

She laughed, easing back from him to look. The divorce papers had curled into a hard angry pitchfork in the flames, and the paper clips which had marked the important places - those were melting in colorful plastic and glowing bright, unholy red as the flames heated the metal.

Castle took her hand; their fingers tentatively touched, traced, exploring old patterns and new lines.

She didn't know what happened next but Christmas. And maybe she'd wake up one morning and it would all be there like magic.

And maybe not.

But at least they were here. Working on together.

 **x**


	21. Federal Heat - Chapter One

**Federal Heat - Chapter One**

* * *

Kate closed the front door behind her softly, softly, waited with a held breath in the loft's entryway. But she heard murmurs coming from upstairs, and she slumped back in relief.

She'd made it. Barely, from the quietness and dim light in the loft, but she hadn't yet missed it.

Using the door for leverage, she lifted a foot and unzipped her boot, shook it off and managed to catch it before it could thunk to the floor. She set it aside, and bent down to unzip the other, sliding out of that one a little more carefully. She left her boots where they were and padded in her socked feet towards their bedroom, shedding layers and briefcase in the office on her way to more comfortable clothes for bedtime.

Remy's bedtime.

Kate molted from her clothes, scraped her hair back into a knot at the nape of her neck. She peeled off the thigh-high stockings and dropped them on the closet floor, a little _hello_ for Rick later; he did love discovering intimates around their room. And she quite enjoyed the way he looked after her, taking everything to either the dry cleaner or hand-washing it himself for fun later.

He still spoiled her; she still took every opportunity to remind him it was the man she was in love with, not the luxuries.

She stalked naked to the shower and blasted it hot and fierce, and immediately the water steamed and scalded her within an inch of her life. A brilliant bright gasp of so-good heat.

Kate scrubbed her shoulders and back with strong-scented body wash, needing to get the long day off her, the sweat and work and nerves. She still wasn't used to teaching, despite having been at it for four years now, almost five. Longer than Remy had been alive. But it suited her; she was naturally bossy, and she had a hard edge that was ideal for the Academy. Plus she had something of a reputation there - her name was on all the trophies, as Castle liked to say.

She shut off the water and jumped out, certain Castle would have heard her moving about by now. He'd draw it out just so she could make it for the fun part this evening.

Kate dried off quickly, not wanting to test their son too much, and hurried for the closet to find clean underwear, leggings, the bra she'd bought last month for this (well, for him, obviously not for Remy), and finally an old t-shirt of Rick's she'd claimed long ago. Elektra - a woman in red with a sword, such a male fantasy, but also her own favorite superhero. She'd always assumed he'd bought it with her in mind, back when they weren't allowed to have each other in mind, and maybe that was one of the reasons why she'd taken it.

Hurrying now, she loosened her hair and ran her fingers through it even as she headed for the boy's bedroom, taking the stairs in twos - exactly like they always told him not to do. She made it to the hall in time to hear Remy's giggling and Castle's deeper _it's bedtime now_ tones, which he often used on her as well, for much more nefarious purposes.

Kate paused outside their son's bedroom, listening, getting her thumping heart back under control.

"And the snail got so frustrated with the teasing that he decided there was only one thing left for him to do-"

"Buy his car!" Remy injected, that thrill of knowing what came next in his voice.

"Buy a super-fast speedster, the fastest sports car he could find in miniature-"

"In min-ture!" Remy chimed in.

Okay, maybe Rick had told this joke too many times.

"So he bought his car and he sent it to the autobody shop to get it detailed-"

"That means painted."

"That's what you call it when you're talking about cars, Rem. Detailed is painted and everything else you do to a car to make it fancy." She could hear Castle humoring the boy, loving it the whole time, how much Remy invested in the story, how he had her particularity over the details and Castle's vision for how it should go. "Anyway, he wanted to make his car fancy, but he had a reason in mind. He asked the mechanic to paint a big S on the side of the door."

Oh God, this was going to take all night, wasn't it? She didn't want to hang around listening to this snail joke for another forty-five minutes, the way Castle and Remy could stretch it out. And thank goodness Alexis no longer lived with them; she was adept at embellishments of her own.

Kate slid through the crack in the open door, pushed it farther until she could see Castle on the boy's bed, propped against the headboard with Remy fully awake and bouncing at the foot, nowhere near 'in bed'. She was glad to be breaking it up. "He had an S painted on the door so that, when everyone saw him speeding down the street, they'd say, 'Look at that S-car go!'"

"Mommy!"

"Aw, you ruined the punchline, Beckett."

She wrapped her arms around Remy as he bounced to his feet on the bed, squeezed his warm little body. "I'm not staying up for another hour just to listen to a story I've heard a million times." She winked at Remy and rocked him side to side. "Do you think we can skip it and get straight to-"

"Christmas train, Christmas train!" he whooped, trying to jump on the bed still in her arms.

"Oh boy, Rick, what'd you feed this monster?"

"Just the usual - sugar and syrup and waffles."

"And chicken!"

She laughed, cupped his honest face in her hands to kiss him. "Chicken nuggets for dinner, huh? Did you and Daddy go to McDonalds by any chance?"

"We-"

"Plead the fifth, son, plead the fifth!"

"Mommy, I peed the fifth," Remy said solemnly, bright eyes on hers. She tried very hard not to laugh but it had been a long day and he was too adorable. But she softened the laughter by picking him up and putting him on her hip.

"Let's do Christmas train, Rem. What do you say?"

"You tired? Daddy said you tired."

"I am tired," she admitted, kissing his sweet earnest face. "But not too tired to keep my promise." His eyes were Rick's, his hair that same brown straw and lying flat and short on his forehead. They'd taken to cutting the sides in a buzz and letting the top grow out a bit more, just to keep it off his neck and ears. "Do we have a deal?"

"We have a deal!" Remy squirmed out of her arms to the bed, jumped from there to the floor, but he halted in his tracks and turned back around to his father. "Daddy?"

"Oh, yes. It's a deal, Rem. Here, take your fox and blanket and let Mom or me carry you down the stairs to be safe."

"I can do the stairs!" he protested. He was newly four years old; he could entirely do the stairs - in the daylight.

"Not at night," she said. A two a.m. fall down the stairs last year after Remy had woken with a nightmare and come running for them - she'd never get over that. His collarbone broken, that awful figure-eight splint and his near-constant misery for three weeks. No. "Come here. I'm not too tired to carry you if you don't hop up and down on my hip."

"Be good," Castle warned him. A glancing kiss to the boy's temple as he nudged him towards Kate.

Remy dutifully climbed on the bed and then into her arms again, tucking fox and blanket up against her chest and his own before burrowing down. Castle followed, a hand on her back and a swift kiss in greeting.

"Come on," she murmured to her son, gripping her forearm under his bottom to hold him up. Long and lanky, too big to be carried, but she would always take it if she could get it.

He was growing up so fast.

* * *

Castle loved this tradition.

The train ran from a 'mountain' under the Christmas tree and out to the living room windows, climbing a rather steep angle to chug its way along the sills towards the dining area. It came down a gradual descent to the back of the dining room, snaked at the front of the kitchen island, and all the way over to the gas fireplace, which he turned on just for this.

From there it wound under the stairs and disappeared into the train station. And of course, it could go back the same way it had come. Remy had no end in delight over the Christmas train, and he and Castle had put it together for a week, getting it exactly right, doing test runs, and affixing Lego men to the coal car to ride it. They had ideas for something new to add every day, a kind of train advent calendar in a way.

Remy wasn't allowed to touch it during the day, but at night before bedtime, he was allowed the controls, and he could follow the train all through the loft, inventing disasters and heroics to the soft noise of the engine.

The train was special, and not just because of the joy their son found in it.

Their relationship had always been in transit in those early years. Marriage had happened on a trip to Vegas after Castle had followed her to the FBI, then for the probationary period they had rented a house in Cleveland while she was a new agent. She'd been assigned to Topeka, and then to Memphis, each stint lasting only six months, a year. She'd walked away from her mother's murder case, only to walk back into law enforcement with the same demands and same hours.

They'd been moving around the country but getting nowhere.

She'd walked away from that too. And that's when it had happened for them.

They had only been back in New York for a handful of months, winter closing in and the darkness falling early. She'd had an interview at the Academy, she'd been pleased with how it had gone; the board had been practically salivating over her federal credentials.

He had taken her to Remy's that night to celebrate. A familiar place, the city like home again. She'd had her usual, the buffalo burger and a strawberry milkshake. There was an extra kick to the sauce, she'd mentioned to him. They had laughed and talked and he'd found such hope for them again, for her, in the promise of this new job.

And then she'd puked on the sidewalk going home. He would never be able to drink a strawberry milkshake again; she'd never have her usual after that night either. She had been ill that night and a couple days after, and then it had seemed to run its course. Food poisoning, they'd said, maybe the burger hadn't been cooked well enough. They talked about not going back for a while.

But the vomiting had come back again a week later, right before Christmas. She'd gone to a walk-in clinic and been fine at home later, hadn't mentioned anything, and he forgot to ask. Sensitive about what she ate, but he hadn't thought anything of it.

The train was how she'd told him. Christmas Eve. He'd probably decorated for Christmas in something of a frenzy, such relief at being home and settled, and by that time, they'd known she had the job. Before dinner, once his mother and Alexis and her father had arrived, she had made him start up the train and show off his Christmas crazy. He'd been laughing about it, not a bit sheepish but feeling her eyes on him, her intense grin, and it had taken a moment for him to see it.

Attached to the caboose was a white envelope with his name on it. He'd looked at Kate and plucked it off, thinking it was awfully sentimental of her. And then he had opened the envelope to find a sonogram, labeled in her neat block print _food poisoning at Remy's._

He loved that story. And Remy had stuck.

Now Castle led his wife to the couch where they could keep an eye on him, and she sank into his side with a sigh. He brushed the hair back from her lips and then kissed them, lightly, waiting on her to relax fully.

To be home.

"How was the class?" he murmured, tightening his arm around her shoulders.

"Perfect. Sorry you couldn't make it. But."

"Perfect," he chuckled. "That's okay. You did a lot of work on this."

"First time I've really felt like we're equipping this group of cadets with the things they need to be prepared out there."

"Brilliant woman. Bringing in victims to tell their stories. Putting a human face, have the story come to life in front of you. They won't forget it."

"I think not," she murmured, smiling as Remy raced the train. "It was good. I think even for the Scotts? To tell their story and have the class respond to them."

He pressed his lips to her temple. "You're doing good work, Kate."

She shivered and pressed her shoulder against him. "How do you do that? Read my mind or something."

He chuckled. "I know you, that's all. You come home and you second-guess. You don't do it out there. You're professional, in control, completely competent. But you get back here and you start to think."

"I want to honor her."

"I promise you are."

She laid her cheek back to his shoulder. "She'd have loved him. Nothing at all like me-"

"Your father says otherwise."

"Okay, a little bit like me," she said, lips twitching. "Stubborn like me. But your mother blames that on you, so-" She shrugged, as if that proved her point.

"I think your mom would've loved him because he's yours," he told her.

"Ours," she said, lifting her chin to kiss him. "Because she would have loved you too, Rick. She already did. Had your books on her secret shelf."

"Her what?" he startled. This wasn't a story he'd heard before. "Secret shelf. Ooh, do tell, Beckett."

"Not much to tell, but she had a law library made up of her own textbooks, anthologies, reference books. It was really our dining room, but she worked at the dining room table. And on the shelf right behind her chair, one shelf, there'd be a stack of murder mysteries she was going through. One of yours was always there."

"I can't believe you've never told me this before."

"I haven't?" she said, twisting to look at him. "No way. I'm sure I have."

"No. You absolutely have not." He snaked his arm around her waist and tugged her into him. "I'd definitely remember it. And so would you."

She grinned and patted his chest, leaning into him. "Don't go starting something, babe. Still have to wrestle the monster into bed after a thousand rounds of Christmas train."

"And then?"

She slid out of his lap and stood, a hand coming to his ear, that erotic caress. "You know very well what happens then."

He cleared his throat and clapped his hands together. "Alright, Rem. Time's up."

"Castle," she chided, stalking towards the boy who was about to throw a fit. "No, Rem, Daddy is joking."

The quivering chin paused. He was given a bewildered look by the four year old. "Look at that S-car go?"

"Right," he said, wincing as Kate laughed. "Escargot. That's it, buddy. Don't mind me."

Kate took Remy by the hand and led him to the Christmas tree, bent low to whisper secrets that only he could hear.

 **x**


	22. Federal Heat - Final Chapter

**Federal Heat - Final Chapter**

* * *

In the end, Rem came to them with his blanket tucked under his arm and his thumb in his mouth. He crawled up onto the couch and nestled his head on Kate's lap and fought back sleep as his eyelids grew heavy. She was combing her fingers through his hair, so Castle tugged the blanket out of his grip and spread it out over the boy's curled body.

He loved this. It was everything to him, together on the couch watching the baby fall asleep.

He'd had this blanket made from the scraps of Kate's ruined wedding dress. The dress he'd picked out and bought for her in Vegas for their wedding, back when she'd told him he had carte blanche, _pick a date, I'll show up._ How far they'd come since then, since those days of uncertainty and traveling and her mother's case. Remy's baby blanket had been her wedding dress, stained and torn from the limo ride to the hospital where he'd been admitted for febrile seizures after an infection had set in to his gunshot wound.

Damn, they had a crazy life.

Or, well. They had at one point. No longer. On their dresser in the bedroom, her mother's ring laid in the little opal box he had bought her their first Christmas a few months after they'd gotten married. He hadn't known then she would put the ring away like that, but the symbolism of it still got to him. There was still blood caked in the prongs of the setting around the diamond. She had refused to let him get it cleaned; she said she had wanted a reminder of the high cost of her relentless pursuit.

Her mother's business card, given to them by an informant who had set them up for a fatal trap, was also inside that opal box. A reminder of a different sort, a note of caution. On the back, in her mother's handwriting, _I told you so._

Even with that. Done. He had learned that once Kate Beckett made a decision, she didn't go back. She didn't vacillate, didn't let her thoughts circle; it was done, it was over.

She had walked away.

And their life was so rich, so full because of that choice. His daughter was in law school, Remy was in three-day preschool, she taught at the Academy, Castle had another book deal in the works. They talked about another baby in that idle way that hinted it would be sooner rather than later, like the decision had already been made, fated.

She wasn't the same woman he'd known, she had sharper edges where he least expected it, and softer places that he'd never have imagined. She was a careful mother, particular and promise-keeping, her interactions always meaningful.

Even this, the boy in his Christmas pajamas with his blanket up against his face, sucking his thumb though he was too old for that - Kate looked like she was memorizing the details, brushing her fingers through his hair and soaking him in. She took nothing for granted; she was relentless in her determination to do this right.

She needed him for the fun and spontaneity; she relied on him to let her break loose of those confines, give her room to fail and mess up. When Remy had gotten croup at a year old, she'd been the hard steel badass he knew, but the moment their baby was finished with the breathing treatments and on the mend, she had cried in his arms.

She had walked away from justice, but they'd discovered, together, that only _this_ could even hope to come close to a full restoration. Her mother's absence from their lives was only eased by Remy's laughter at bathtime or the way he adored the train set or his sweet sleep on their laps.

Remy's lashes fluttered. He had stopped sucking, his mouth was hanging open.

Kate bent over him and kissed his temple, her hair curtaining the two of them.

"Let me carry him up to bed," he told her, reaching a hand across to lay on Remy's shoulder. "Come with me and we'll tuck him in."

She helped transfer the boy into his arms, caught the blanket before it could fall. She stood with him, tucking the soft satin trim under Remy's face. "What's happened?"

"Nothing," he said, smiling gently. Nothing _would_ ever happen. Jordan Shaw had given over the case to Homeland Security and after a one-week deposition process, he and Kate had never heard from their contact agent ever again.

In six years, nothing had happened.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she whispered, nudging him towards the stairs.

"Daydreaming," he answered, shook his head. He carried Remy upstairs and into the boy's bedroom, wondering if he wasn't too old for another newborn, another spat of snatching sleep and diaper-changing and all the things they'd finally grown out of. Maybe so. But it hardly mattered; he'd do it all over again with her.

When he got downstairs, Kate was standing before the tree, turning an ornament in her fingers. One of Remy's from preschool last year, a crude reindeer made of pipe cleaners and peanuts. She tapped the googly eyes and turned at his approach, smiling.

"I've been thinking," she said, biting her bottom lip.

"Oh, yeah?" He wriggled his eyebrows and brushed a hand down her back. "Dangerous."

"Says the one daydreaming just a few short minutes ago."

Oh, she assumed he'd been daydreaming about babies.

"Yeah?"

"I want to do something for my mom."

He was a bit blindsided. She _hadn't_ been talking about babies.

"I've been thinking a lot lately about how she ought to have been here for all this. When I'm running late and you have a deadline, she'd have been the one we coerce into helping us. Your mother is-"

"No, I know," he said. After the last time, they had both privately agreed that his mother couldn't keep up with Remy. "Your mom would have chased him around easily."

"Hypothetical," she said, shrugging it off. "But she'd have been in our lives. Remy's grandmother. And what does he even know of her?"

He grimaced, gave her a sideways look. "Well. He calls her Joey. Did you know that?"

"Jo-" She pressed her arms to her sides, her eyes scouring his features. "He calls her Joey? Is my dad telling him stories?"

"Yeah," he admitted. "And Jim gave him a picture, a photo, on his iPad. He sometimes gets mixed up and calls her Mommy, you guys look so much alike. I don't know that he gets there's a difference; he hears me telling stories about his mother and then Jim talks about Joey, and so he might be conflating the two."

"Oh."

"But talk more about this, doing for your mom." They still run the scholarship fund; there's a benefit every other year that he and Kate put on to raise money and give awards.

"Something at Christmas," she said slowly. "Something... so my son knows there's a difference. So she's involved somehow."

"Do you want to visit her? All three of us, or hey, take Remy, the two of you. He's old enough now that he might understand and hold on to it, especially if you make it a tradition."

"Hm."

"You know, in some cultures, they bring gifts. Offerings for the dead. It would make an impression on Remy if you did that."

"More than just flowers," she murmured. "Maybe."

"Think about it," he answered her, taking a kiss from the corner of her mouth. "We'll figure out something special."

"Special," she sighed, sliding into his arms. "That's what I want. What I used to have with my mom - that's what I want Remy to have with her too. I just don't know how to invent that out of nothing."

"Well, he has something special with you, Kate. So there's your start."

* * *

They spent the next few days talking it up, reminding Remy about his grandmother Joey, and showing him photos of Kate and Johanna together so he could understand the connection. Since Alexis was coming back for the holidays and the days were drawing near where it would be closed for the holidays, Kate decided they ought to go ahead and try it.

She didn't expect a lot from this first visit, maybe only that Remy would find the place familiar next year when they came. But she did hope to make this something of a tradition - for all of them.

Castle had tried very sweetly to bow out and give this one to her, but she wasn't interested in making it all about grief. It was also a celebration of their family, about hope in the midst of sorrow, and so she was forcing everyone to come along.

Alexis met them there, at the City Courthouse on Church Street, and already Remy was impressed. In his father's arms, he stared up at the soaring Roman columns that created the front portico and held up the triangular pediment. When Alexis approached, Kate gave her a brief, crushing hug, pleased that his daughter had been able to come.

Her father was inside the vestibule, already through security, and of course Rem adored the whole search and wand, loved watching his sister and mother's bags disappear down the conveyor belt, their phones and keys passed through in a dish. Castle collected his things and put them back in coat pockets while she held Remy at her side, and she did a slow turn inside the building, her hands squeezing his shoulders.

"This is City Courthouse," she told him quietly. Even still, her words seemed to echo. "This is where Grandma Joey, my mother, set people free."

"Ooh, it's big." Remy reached up and grabbed her by the hands, tugging forward towards his grandfather. She released him and he went running, and she watched as Jim enveloped him in a hug.

Castle came to her side and Alexis as well, and all of them gathered as a group to one side, waiting on her direction.

She reached out and brushed the flop of hair off Rem's forehead. "This is also Family Court," she told him, though she doubted he'd remember. "Where your daddy fought for Alexis, to have her forever."

Remy's mouth dropped open.

Castle threw her a look, but she felt it was important he knew that his father was a crusader too, just in a different manner. She took Remy's hand and led him down the hall, the crowds beginning to empty the farther in they got. These were merely research rooms, arbitration rooms, but she hoisted Remy onto a bench outside one so that he was nearly face to face with her. "When Alexis was just about your age," she started, and she felt the girl lean in against her, an arm around her waist. She gave Alexis a brief smile, and met Castle's eyes, but he wasn't objecting. "This was where Daddy came to tell the judge that Alexis was his baby girl, that she belonged to him, and that no matter what happened, he would love her forever."

"Did Daddy have to tell the judge about me?"

"No, Rem," Alexis answered, tapping his nose. "Because your mommy and daddy stayed together, and there was no need to say who you belonged to - everyone agrees you belong to both."

Remy bounced on his feet and flung his arms around Kate's neck. "I belong to both. Wait. Where's _your_ mommy, Lex?"

"You met my mom," Alexis laughed. "Remember at Thanksgiving when she showed up in the middle of dinner?"

"That lady was _crazy_. And she tried to take you away."

"Well, see, that's why Dad had to come to a judge and say I belonged to him, and not her."

"And that's what Alexis is going to school for," Castle finally chimed in. "To be a family lawyer, to help families figure out how to be nice to each other even if they don't stay together."

"But _my_ family will always stay together," Remy insisted. "Yes."

"Yes," Kate smiled, patting his back. "Now. Do you want to go upstairs and see the court room where the judge sits and the lawyers are? I bribed a bailiff. He was one of my students last year. The whole court room will be yours."

"Oh, yes, _awesome._ "

Her father chuckled and took Remy's hand, encouraged him to jump down. "I know where the elevators are off this hall. I used to come see Joey from time to time, and I did my fair share of settlements over here when my civil suits-"

Castle's lips were twitching at her father's involved explanation, but of course Remy listened raptly. He liked stories of any kind, even if he didn't understand half the words being said to him - he'd had Castle telling him wild tales in the exact same manner for years, and Castle ought to recognize the similarities.

Alexis turned and gave her father a tight hug, a kiss on his cheek, a soft murmur _thanks for keeping me_ , before she went on ahead with Remy and Jim. Castle turned back to Kate, a hand coming to her hip with a short tug.

His kiss merely glanced against the corner of her mouth, but there was a soft sigh in it. "You're extraordinary, you know. Thank you for making it about all of our family. I'd never have thought of that."

"I asked Alexis ahead of time about the part that's _her_ story, and it seemed a better idea to stick to Family Court for a four year old. Less likely to encounter trouble."

"You're exactly right, Kate. It's good for him to put a place to where his grandmother used to be, where Johanna has her legacy. And we are, somehow, a family of lawyers," he chuckled. "Start him young."

"I don't mean he has to be a lawyer. I just wanted-"

"I know. And it's beautiful. Come on, I want to get a picture of him sitting in the judge's chair." He tugged her after him, but she hung back just a little, letting the marble halls and wide spaces fill her vision.

She had been to City Courthouse often, so many times the impression it first made had dulled and faded. But she could still remember her mother taking her by the hand and leading her through these same halls to conference rooms or the bathroom, and how it had once felt like her own sacred space. Familiar.

And her destiny. To be right here, following in her mother's footsteps.

It had not worked out that way. And even her second attempt, as a detective giving testimony to deliver that justice in these halls, even that had been a failure. But now she was following her son's footsteps to the elevator, carrying out a new tradition that was nevertheless old. She might not have the life she had envisioned when first walking these halls, and especially not the dark fate she had embraced later walking these halls, but this was so much richer, so much more full.

This was a life her mother would have been proud of.

 **x**


	23. Keep Calm - Chapter One

_**A/N:** Due to holiday plans, December 24th's post will happen late in the evening of Christmas Eve rather than tomorrow night, Dec 23. (I have been posting early to allow the Aussies to get chapters on time.) I hope your weekend is wonderful, and that you're able to spend it with chosen family._

* * *

 **Keep Calm and Carry On (kate/drunk/london) - Chapter One**

* * *

Surveillance kept her on the fine edge of tension in a way that only Castle's hands on her had ever achieved before.

She might not admit that to him though. Just in case he thought it was a challenge.

"Where're the nuts?" he said, his head behind her seat, body leaned out. "I swear I had a whole can-"

"You don't want an answer to that," she muttered, putting the binoculars to her eyes and scanning the cannery.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Were you about to make a joke about my nuts?"

"Yes."

"Darn, I missed it."

"Not to worry, you managed to get the whole - you know - idea." She panned up, noting the floors. "Five floors, Rick."

"Yeah, I saw that on the schematics." He'd checked out the blueprints - or rather, he had asked a mutual friend to check out the blueprints - from the city.

Random Pierce had been pretty electrified to help them out, since the stuff with Mike Royce, and he could be trusted not to spread it around. For the most part. She just didn't want it getting back to He Who Must Not Be Named, wherever he was, whomever he had turned with his blackmail and bribes. She had a feeling it was more than just bribe money; she had a feeling a whole lot of fear went into his hold over people.

Which meant the repercussions for their investigating her shooting, and her mother's death, were far more than Kate was willing to pay.

It still made her stomach flip when Castle made a move without her, doing a dumb google search with terms that were just too obvious, skulking possible addresses while she was stuck at work. Together had quite a different denotation to him than it did to her.

"You're not going in there," he said.

"I wasn't thinking I was."

"Yeah you were."

Okay, a very small part of her wanted to go in there. "Five floors."

"Five floors with so many hiding places, I know," he answered grimly. "But I said no."

She lifted an eyebrow and lowered the binoculars, turned to look at him. " _You_ said no."

His face got stubborn. Dark. "I said no."

She took in a sharp breath. "You know that's... kinda hot, babe."

His eyes glittered but otherwise he didn't break, maintained that tight furious demand.

She sighed. "Anyone else, Rick Castle, I'd take a nutcracker to."

His nostrils flared, a faint crack in his demeanor as he suppressed what she _knew_ was a laugh. "Nutcracker," he echoed, covering the slip by lifting an eyebrow of his own. "How... festive."

"Tis the season."

He turned his face away, ostensibly to watch the cannery four blocks down, but she knew it was to smother the grin he was trying not to let her see. And yeah, his amusement dialed down the arousal, but that had been a self-defense move on her part anyway.

Couldn't be having sex in the surveillance car. Just wouldn't do. It had happened twice but _no more_. She swore. They needed to be careful; it was their lives on the line, and potentially everyone else's they loved.

"Okay, Clara," he said. "Back to the job."

"Clara?"

"Nutcracker. Going with a theme."

"Oh, from the ballet," she snorted. "Right." Shook her head. "Just - you know, the Storm books. Weird that it-"

"Oh. Clara Strike." He mad an uncomfortable roll of his shoulders. "We never really talked before about - well, we did. Huh. Does that rule of yours still apply? About our former paramours."

"What?" She was lost; she shot him a look, trying to decipher the tangle of words he'd mazed around her. "Former lovers? Oh, you jackass, you _asked_ me. We weren't even dating, hell, I barely had admitted to myself that I might go there-"

"Go there," he mimed, chuckling.

"And you asked how many people I'd slept with? Not for you to know."

"Are we still going by that rule?"

Her gaze sharpened. The flush at his neck, the way his eyes roamed the street, the nervous tic of his finger against his knee. "What do 'former paramours' have to do with Clara Strike?"

He flinched.

"She's a real person," she said, letting that dawn on her. "A muse."

"Don't say it like that," he muttered. A hand down his face. "I'm... actually not supposed to tell you. I signed a - secrets act thing."

"Secrets Act is for the UK."

"One here in 1911," he said absently. "But you guessed, so that's - at least that's out of the way."

"Strike is a CIA operative."

"The character-"

" _And_ one of your muses. How _many_ muses, Castle?"

"I... there's only one you."

"Very nice," she said, rolling her eyes. "How many?"

"Did you just ask me how many I've slept with?"

She eyed him, closed her mouth, really thought about it. Stopped reacting, stopped being so horrified by the idea of her being just another muse in a long line of stupid women who couldn't manage to say no to him, and _thought_.

He had meant it when he'd said _there's only one you_. In the same way she meant it when her answer to their many problems and worlds colliding was _I love you_. Let that be enough.

"No," she said finally. "I'm not asking."

He let out a sigh. "If you were, I'd tell you."

"Only ones that - affect _us_."

"How... am I supposed to know if something will affect us?" he said. The honest bewilderment in his voice made her want to slide over the center console and crawl into his lap. Press her face to his neck and have his arms around her until her heart stopped pounding so hard. "Kate?"

"If - you sleep with someone while we're together-"

"Oh God no." His hand shot out and snagged her upper arm. "Kate. Seriously. You can't think that's a possibility."

She grit her teeth. "Anything is possible."

"No. Not that."

"Don't say that and set us both up-"

"I said no." She slid her eyes his direction and it was back - that rock solid stubbornness. Dark. He was capable of things she'd never thought possible from him, a rich fool of a writer.

But he wasn't a rich fool either. And she knew that.

"Okay," she said, the word too shy and painful than she'd meant to show.

"Get over here."

"But there's-"

"Get over here, Beckett. _If I sleep with someone while we're together._ "

The binoculars clattered to the center cupholders as she unfolded from the driver's seat. She climbed into his lap and pressed against him, and his arms fairly crushed her with his insistence. An angry bite at her neck and the sucking force of his mouth. He was furious. That she thought it, that it had occurred to her, that she wanted a deal in place beforehand that he'd tell her-

"Never gonna happen," he husked. Mouth to her jaw. The skin before her ear that sent a live current through her body. His nose nudging against her, harder. "Don't you dare think this is anything less than it is."

"What is it?" she whispered.

"You're going to marry me."

She froze.

"Don't pretend," he growled. "You don't have to promise to obey, I'm not asking for that. You're going to be my partner for the rest of our lives, Kate Beckett, and you know it. I _am_ your one and done."

She laughed. She didn't mean to, but it just - he aroused her so completely like this, and he knew it, and so part of her wondered if this was a show, but no, it wasn't a show. It was just _true._ They had worked this all out in London in their spectacular blow up of a fight-turned-confession.

"So long as I'm yours," she murmured, a kiss to his jaw. "One and done."

"Should I get the first two annulled? I don't know how that works, but I'll do that-"

"First two aren't the same," she told him. A kiss under his jaw where some of the scruff had grown in. "Ever grow a beard?"

"What does that have to do with-"

"It might be sexy. Well, on you anyway. Anything that-"

"Beckett. We have a deal?"

"Did you just propose, like a demand?"

"Did I?"

She chuckled against his neck and made him flinch, kissed him before he could try to answer that. She didn't need an answer; that had been - sweet. A little bit. To her anyway. They'd spent too long speaking over and around everything that had mattered that she'd flown to London intending to fuck it up for good. When he'd chased after her - well, that had been all the answer she needed. He was the answer.

"Back to surveillance, Rick," she hummed in his ear, sliding off his lap to the center console. He was still dark and stormy, she knew this wasn't over, but the promise was enough for her. The clarity.

She folded back into the driver's seat and fished the binoculars from the cupholder.

She let him brood in silence.

* * *

Castle was at the smart board he'd bought for her office when she finally got to her place. She hadn't been exactly quiet, but he didn't seem to realize she was there. He was wearing her favorite dark grey sweater with the collar, his hair long enough now to brush the top. She dropped her stuff in a chair and came up at his back, fingers stroking his nape, and he yelped in surprise.

She kissed the surprise from his mouth. He blinked like an owl in the darkness.

"What are you doing here, babe?" She loved the soft hair under her fingers. "Christmas Eve dinner? Supposed to be at your place."

His gaze cleared, though he took one more look at the board where their sniper still reigned. "The women took over. Alexis and my mother, I mean. I told them I'd come here to wait for you, though they probably know what that means."

She paused. "They know about the case?"

He laughed, a sharp bark as he shook his head and stepped out of her touch. "No, not the case. They think we have sex marathons over here at your place."

She grinned. "Well. We do."

He grinned back. "Yeah we do."

She reached out and took the remote from his fingers, aimed it at the board.

"No, wait, I had an idea-"

She dodged his block and turned off the board, stepping away from him. "No, Rick. It's Christmas Eve. As it is, no sex marathon because I'm late. We need to get going."

He pouted, and she was faintly ill at ease to realize his frustration was real - and it centered on the smart board. On the _case_.

That was unacceptable. She'd done all this work to be more, she had nearly wrecked them even then, and now he was the one who couldn't pull back? "Come on. Find your shoes, your coat. I'm going to the bathroom and getting changed really quickly and we'll go." She laid her hands on his shoulders and gave him a kiss to think about, something sweet and teasing rather than _push me down on my bed._ She hoped anyway. Sometimes they were one in the same.

She hurried away, just in case, hustling towards her wardrobe. She shed her plaid shirt and the jeans, dumped them on the end of the bed to save time. Rifling through her hanging up clothes, she found the oversized sweater - he had strictly forbidden formal wear, though she had a feeling it had been for her sake, and she didn't need it, but she wouldn't break the rules of the house. Leggings and knee high leather boots, the chain around her neck-

No, scratch that. No chain, no diamond ring like an albatross for Christmas Eve dinner with his family after her long day shift. She'd done her tradition, now time for his.

She wore a leather cord with fringe and metal, some artsy piece Castle had picked up at one of the Christmas Fairs earlier this month.

She was ready.

When she came out, he was not.

He had the smart board on again.

 **x**


	24. Keep Calm - Final Chapter

**Keep Calm and Carry On - Final Chapter**

* * *

She stood there for a heartbeat, absorbing everything she'd done, how they'd gotten to this, and then she came forward. She took the remote from him wordlessly, her grip on his arm brooking no arguments. He was silent as well, though she could tell he had ideas, theories, that something had caught him and he had been trying to figure it out.

"Dinner," she said firmly, shutting off the smart board. She handed him her coat and he took his cue with grace, sliding it onto her arms, adjusting the collar, his usual. When she turned to look at him, his face had begun to clear, his eyes were with her again. "Better."

They had clear rules about this secret investigation, and neither of them were allowed to break those rules.

His head bobbed, a brief acknowledgement, and he moved to her living room, found his own coat thrown over the back of her couch. She watched as he slid it on, and she approached him as he was doing the buttons. She took over, nudging his hands out of her way as she tried to find the words.

This was important.

But she didn't know how to tell him. What to say to make it - not an accusation, not a judgment. God knew she fell into it too, that she grew dark in her own tunnel vision.

In the end, she didn't have to say a word. He took her by the hands and brought her palms to his lips, kissed one and then the other, a lingering third kiss at the base of her thumb. For no reason she could understand other than apology.

Their fingers caught and hooked as they headed for the door, and she knew it was okay.

He wasn't lost. Neither was she.

* * *

Knowing looks passed between Martha and Alexis when she apologized for being late. She didn't attempt the truth because she wasn't sure they would like it (Castle got sucked into her same black hole), she merely allowed Martha to take her coat and hang it in the closet, accepted a brief hug from Alexis.

Castle's hand at the small of her back had her moving for the kitchen, and she offered to help in a low tone meant only for him. He gestured to his daughter. "Kate wants to set the table, if you're ready for that?"

"Sure," Alexis chirped. She had found at least a handful of her sweetness for the holidays, though Kate knew it might not last. She'd take it though, just for his sake. If he couldn't see it for what it was, she wouldn't be the one to elucidate him. "Here, Kate, take these." Alexis opened a cabinet and halfway gestured, then flushed bright red and got them down herself. "Sorry, I've got a few things on my mind."

Kate was put off her game by the honesty. She took the dinner plates with their gilt trim and glanced to Castle, but he had turned away to rib his mother about the candied yams. "You okay?" she asked finally.

"Oh!" Too bright, cheerful again. Somewhat false, though Kate couldn't get a read on why. Was it - she had a secret and it was burning a hole in her chest, or more like she despised Kate and even pretending was too much for her? "I'm totally fine." Protesting too much. "It's all fine. I just maybe - bit off more than I could chew with all this, making dinner."

That rang true. Kate glanced around the kitchen and realized every surface was covered in half-prepared food, while the oven had three or four dishes placed side by side on the racks. "Um. What can I _really_ do to help, Alexis? Because it looks like you're..."

"Falling behind?"

Kate paused.

"Well, I guess I am," the girl admitted. "It's not perfect. But it's - I mean everything is here, I just can't get it all pulled together and Gram is _no_ help. I wanted to do my part to show Dad, and you too, that I meant it. But it's here, it is basically done, it's not a disaster, I swear-"

"Okay, first, that wasn't an indictment," Kate said firmly, a swift look to be sure Castle was out of earshot. He had moved to the dining room table to cover it with a cloth. "You made _dinner_ for all of us. Christmas Eve dinner, and I know from your dad this is a pretty big deal."

"Yeah," Alexis said, looking like she might choke.

"Let me pawn off the table-setting job on him and I'll help, really help. Is that cheese potatoes on the stove? I can finish that. We'll get it all pulled together."

Alexis looked torn, but Kate wasn't having it. None of the Castles were allowed to fall into dark holes tonight, not on her watch.

She marched to the dining room table and put the plates in his hands. "You do this. Slowly, Rick."

"Slowly?" A sharp jerk of his head.

"Give us time to get it - you know - all shaped up." She slid her eyes to Alexis, back to him. "You understand?"

"Oh." He wasn't as subtle about it, but he turned his back to the kitchen and gave her a salute. "Yes, ma'am." A quick kiss to her lips that tasted like peppermint mocha. "And thank you. That's why I love you."

"Hush," she said, and left him to slowly set the table while she did what she always should have done.

Rolled up her sleeves and dug into this family.

* * *

They really did pull it together, not even a hiccup. Kate had the potatoes done, settled in a serving dish and placed on the warmer before Alexis could even finish fretting, and then she was tossing the salad and adding the oil, handing it off to Martha to place on the table. Alexis roped her father into carving the ham, which he did boisterously, and with perhaps more flair than necessary, but it was - spirited. It was joy itself to be in this kitchen with this family and shake her head at Castle's antics, which she knew were done for her sake and for Alexis's as well.

Kate and Alexis finished up the rest of the sides, everything falling into place one after another, easily. They had the table burdened with food before twenty minutes was up and the carved ham displayed prominently in the center. Castle added decor like a true child of a Broadway diva, garland and glass ornaments all plucked from various places around the loft, last minute perfectionism.

Kate applauded softly when he had it just right, and he bowed, and flashed her a smile. They all sat down as one at the table, Kate on his right at the head, only a little uncomfortable by being in such a place of honor. Alexis was across from her at the foot, Martha at her other side, and there was a moment of silence.

A pause.

As if they had all agreed, after the rush and flurry of making this night happen, to take time out to simply _be_. Kate found herself, for that one slow exhale, marveling at how alive she felt with him, and his family, how her grueling Christmas Eve tradition had just been renewed by a couple of hours at his loft working side by side so they could sit down together.

And then, of course, the silence ended and they all fell in, passing dishes and scooping out food, cracking jokes or slyly teasing, most of it centered on Alexis's close call and Martha's dramatics. Smiles. Easy conversation. His daughter was no longer so reclusive, Castle was, as always, charming and diverting (and somehow sweet), and Kate had finally found her place in their rhythm.

She enjoyed herself, the food was everything home-cooking should be, and she was pleased she hadn't ruined their plans with her shift at the precinct - pleased the investigation hadn't suddenly cropped up in the middle of things.

Near the end of the meal, his fingers came to the top of her knee, plucked at her leggings. She turned to look at him and his face was gentle, shining with the season (the season she had tried to ignore for so long), and he leaned in. "You surviving?"

"Thriving," she promised, leaning her elbows on the table so she could wrap a hand around his forearm. She rubbed her thumb back and forth over the curve of his arm. "You?"

"Yes," he said. "Yes." He looked suddenly flustered, and his hand patted her knee but then withdrew. "Hey. Kate. I wanted to tell you."

"No more with the case," she said, squeezing his arm. He opened his mouth to argue and she gave him a look in warning. "I'm serious, Rick. We have to be _careful_ , and falling down that rabbit hole and getting lost in its warren is _not-_ "

"No," he said, a crooked grin. "I was going to say, let's do gifts."

She laughed, scraped a hand through her hair. "Well. Okay. Different direction, that's good. What-"

But Castle had produced a box.

And everyone was looking at her. Two redheads with those hopeful twinkling-blue eyes, and Castle with a tremble in his body as he pushed back his chair.

"Whoa, whoa," she gasped.

He stood and held out his hand, waiting for her. She stared at the box in his other hand. Looked up.

"Come on," he said, smiling at her. "You said my first proposal was crap."

"Your _first_ -"

"Shhh." Castle took her by the arm, tugged, but she stood on her own power, distracted by the little velvet box in his fingers. He was grinning, they were all grinning, and now it all seemed so clear.

" _Castle._ " She tugged his ear, hard enough to pull him towards her. She mashed a kiss to his mouth. "All this time, I thought you'd gotten distracted by the sniper case," she whispered.

"Only distracted by you," he murmured, his hand coming to her back and nudging her towards the living room.

"Where are we going?"

"Come here and see," he said, taking her hand once more and threading them through the furniture and Christmas decor. She bypassed a nutcracker as tall as she was and a life-sized polar bear with a striped scarf before she stood at the Christmas tree, exactly where he positioned her, specific enough that she began to suspect he'd marked it out with tape somehow.

Kate lifted her boot and glanced down, smiled when she saw the tiny 'x' in blue painter's tape. When she lifted her head, Castle was at the living room windows, crouched before the outlet that the tree lights were plugged into.

"What're you doing-"

He flipped a switch and everything was illuminated.

Every window in his loft. Swooping letters in red rope lights.

 _Will you marry me?_

And then the lights began to race across the window, left to right, right to left, to flash and strobe at the end. She laughed, her hand coming over her mouth, as question marks she hadn't seen suddenly lighted up in bright sparkling white lights.

Twinkling lights, like stars. Or diamonds.

She hadn't, for one _moment_ , noticed all this in the living room windows.

Castle came to stand before her, the velvet box open on his palm. The real diamonds glinted red and white in the Christmas lights as Rick slowly took it out.

"Oh my God," she gasped. "That's huge. Are you insane?"

"You know you love it."

"I'm not wearing another ring on a chain around my neck."

"I promise the wedding band will be simple enough to wear at work-"

"Not _too_ simple," she said, wrinkling her nose. "You do know me better than that, I hope. Also-"

"Are you interrupting my proposal?"

"No," she denied, shaking her head. "Because you haven't even started."

"Haven't even _started_. What is all this, Beckett?"

She grinned, teeth tugging on her lip. "A good trial run. Do go on."

"Kinda ruined the mood-"

"Better than a stakeout," she shot back.

"What're you guys _talking_ about," Alexis huffed. "Just say _yes_ already, oh my God. Dad, hurry before she decides this isn't at all romantic."

"Hey now," Castle muttered. He held up the ring and then went down on one knee. "How is this? Better?"

Kate laughed softly, giving Castle her full attention, bending over him. "Oh, no, stand up, babe. This is perfect. Big but intimate." She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him, showing him exactly how intimate. "Give me my ring, Castle."

He stood at her prodding, getting to his feet with a little bounce, and she offered her hand. He took her by the finger, held the ring poised for a moment. "Is that a yes?"

"It was a yes in the car, even after your childish demand." She wriggled her fingers at him and he grinned, slid the ring down to the base of her knuckle.

She stared at it a heartbeat, the sparkle and the _weight_ of it on her finger. She startled when his daughter and mother began to applaud, celebrating with the pop of a champagne cork and whistles.

Castle wrapped his arms around her and squeezed, nearly taking her right off her feet. "I love you." He kissed her, something voracious and intent, and then he finally let her back down. "I never meant to nearly miss our moment, Kate. After London, I swore I would make sure you knew exactly what you mean to me, no matter how long it took. And I'm going to do everything I can to-"

"No, don't," she murmured, touching his lips to silence him. Her ring between them, and she let him see all of the joy that suffused her. "We messed up, both of us, but we figured it out. Haven't we _been_ figuring it out? It's in the past."

"I ditched you, abandoned you, left you feeling like we weren't partners any more." He shook his head, caught her hand to keep her from silencing him. "I promise you now, on all that is Christmas Eve holy, I'm never going to do that again. Partners, and you will always know it, feel it from me."

She believed. Kate wrapped her arms around his neck and brought them close, placing kisses on his chin, his cheek, the side of his nose, his eyebrow. "Christmas futures, Rick. That's what I promise you. All our Christmas futures."

 **x**


	25. Silver and Gold

**Silver and Gold**

* * *

Five Christmas Eves ago, he promised her a fancy dress and a night on the town. They were going to celebrate the joys in their life, no matter that their plans had been knocked off course by his disappearance that summer before. They were finally on the same page, writing their story together, and she hurried home that night only to find him sick in bed. He had caught a cold after she'd dragged him out into a thunderstorm in the Hamptons a few nights before that, but she wasn't disappointed. She merely... held onto it. She believed that new joys would await them.

His smile this morning and the way his fingers caressed her jaw as he murmured good morning is another joy she'll hold close for the rest of her life. And the sparkle in his eyes as he said, _A fancy dress and a night on the town._

It's funny that _this_ is how it manifests.

"Where's the bag?" she calls to Rick. "Reece isn't dressed."

"I know; it's in here with me. I need you to take this one for a second while I-"

"No-no," she chides. Snatches Reece's little hand before he can reach for the cord to her curling iron. "Go find Da."

"Da?"

"Yes, baby, you need to be dressed for our special date." She winds another strand around the curling iron and inspects herself in the mirror. "Castle? Come get this one."

"Don't you dare, Beckett. I need you to come take him so I can-"

"I'm not done getting ready," she shouts back, counting under her breath as she surveys what she still has left. Black shelf bra, black tights, necklace, not much else. She hasn't even begun her make-up, cutting it close with the shower right after work, but she needed the sweat of the precinct off her, wanted a fresh start.

Reece reaches up and grabs for her to help him stand, recoils in shock at the texture of her tights under his hand. "Ack!" He stumbles back and lands on his bottom all over again. "Oof."

She laughs, ducking down to run her fingers across his forehead. "Yeah, they're panty hose. Tights, really. Mama never gets to wear fancy clothes these days, does she?"

He peers up at her with those dark beautiful eyes and that thrill of anticipation jolts through her once more. They're almost hers.

"Hey, gorgeous boy. You need to be good so I can finish getting ready and relieve your daddy."

"Da." A look of mute frustration twists his face, no words coming out to follow. He's nearly two years old, but the most he has are grunts and noises, though she can see he _wants_ it.

"Soon, Reece, I promise. We'll all help you catch up. Your whole family."

"Kate."

She turns and finds Castle coming through from the bedroom, carrying the squirming Jake in his arms. She releases the curling iron and the hair springs free, a perfect ringlet dropping to her shoulder.

"Wow," he says. She smirks, sways her hips for him. She's waiting until the last minute before she puts on her dress so little hands can't get to it.

Or big hands.

She curls the other side in the curling iron and turns to give Jake a big grin. "Hey, don't you look handsome in your tux."

"What about me?" Rick pouts. But only a half a heartbeat before he's grinning back and tugging down the little pleated shirt. "He does look good, doesn't he? I told you they'd wear 'em."

"Oh, hey, I returned the shoes. The new pair are in my bag-"

"I found them, thanks." His eyes roam her body another moment; his eyes fix on her necklace. She's wearing the _joy-_ engraved key he gave her five years ago - and then of course, the bra and tights. His eyes narrow. "No good tempting me, Beckett. This is too important. Your evil plans are foiled."

She laughs, because she's as nervous about the court date as he is, and she reaches out to tug his velvet cummerbund. "I really love you, Rick Castle. And all the joy you've given me."

He beams back at her, leans in to kiss her around the curling iron but she backs up. "Jake will try to grab for it."

"You're right," he sighs, then promptly sets Jake down and lets the one year old find his feet, squealing as he tears down the hall. Castle wriggles his eyebrows at her like he's so clever, but she'll be the one tracking that kid down in twenty seconds.

Still, she savors his kiss, letting it flood her senses and fill her up. The soft touches of his lips, the way his breath is just as fast as hers, the anticipation that sparks like a current. He cups her face in his hands and bumps his nose to hers to knock her back a little.

Their eyes meet. Electric.

This _night_. Beautiful, wonderful night.

"Hurry," he murmurs at her lips. "We have to be there at four-thirty."

"I know," she whispers. She loves him, she loves him; she can't believe how their joy is bursting at the seams.

"Okay, Reece," Castle says, picking up the boy investigating her plastic curlers at their feet. "It's your turn. Kate, can you run after-"

"I got him. Jakey can help with my dress. He likes the crinoline of the skirt."

"He likes it because it's black and sparkles like stars." Castle cradles Reece's head like he's the helpless thing who was placed in their arms almost a year ago. He's almost two, but he still engenders that kind of precious protectiveness from them, being so small and lagging so far behind his younger brother.

"Oh, shoot," she says, quickly piling her hair half-back. "Jake. He'll be in the-"

Pans clatter from the kitchen, and she goes running, snagging the rob from the back of the chair as she does. Better get that crazy kid before he pulls a soup tureen down on his head.

* * *

Rick tugs at Reece's heel, shakes his head. "One moment, buddy. I know shoes are uncomfortable, but we gotta get used to it." He bends forward and kisses Reece's forehead to soften the blow; he knows Reece understands far more than he can speak, and he tries to talk to him like a toddler. "And we're running late. Hey. How're we doing on time, Kate?"

"You have it," she say quietly.

Jake, despite being their rambunctious one, sits still on his wife's lap on the couch. He is - as Castle predicted - entranced by her dress and the silver thread in the embroidered stars. He keeps petting a starburst with his fingers, staring, and then lifting his head to marvel at her.

Kate is finishing up her make-up out here, the little pocket mirror in her hand, painting the last of her lipstick. She looks amazing, her joy filling her face like light.

The car service is on its way, the car seats already installed as part of their usual contract, and Rick is almost through tying Reece's shoes. Poor boy - he'll be made to walk as much as they can goad him tonight, while his younger brother will be stuck in someone's arms and _dying_ to get down.

Rick never expected to be five years married with two babies. Which is a switch because five years ago, he expected to be married to her with two babies by now. Things just never work the way he expects, and after his disappearance, it didn't seem possible to get back to that timeline. They went on as normal, pushed through, but when it didn't come easily, all those next steps for their family, he knew it might never come.

Ever since that Christmas five years ago where they wandered into the middle of serving meals to the homeless, they've donated her monthly salary to the church there who sponsors the project. Dan, the formerly-homeless leader of the Hot Meals program, is a close friend now; he sends special needs their way, gives them the chance to do more than just pour money into things.

They even made the trek out to Hampton Bays every Friday for three years - Kate working her schedule to fit - and they would spend the night in the Hamptons, coming home to the city late on Saturday. Usually on those trips, they talked about how the universe might be giving them a sign, time to move on from their dream of a bigger family, time to find new joys. So when she took the Captain's test and passed easily, they began to seriously shift their dreams, broaden their horizons to encompass things other than children, look at his disappearance again maybe, when she got a phone call.

And the babies happened.

It was simply a series of connections. Making good choices and showing love and compassion when it was most needed.

Rick loves telling this story, and he feels like now is an appropriate time, as they all get in the elevator and head downstairs for the waiting car.

"Reece, Jakey, want to hear your story?" he says. Reece claps from his spot before the elevator buttons, turning to Rick in expectancy. "Alright, once upon a time, there was a man named Robert."

Kate chuckles softly, smoothing the coat over Reece's shoulders as he clings to skirt. "Daddy and I helped Robert find a job, so he could stay with his babies. It's funny, because we never saw Robert again."

"We never did," he admits. That one time at the Hot Meals program and then a handful of letters from Dan, the program to transition out of homelessness. "But Robert gave my card to a lady named Margaret Rose. She thought she would never need it, but she gave it to a woman at the church who was there for a hot meal."

(Years ago, all that, and Rick remembers pulling out his wallet and how mortified Robert was, and so Rick altered course and gave Robert a business card instead, saying _call me if you ever need help.)_

That card led to these babies.

"I got a phone call at home," Kate continues the story. "It was just me and Daddy here." She's tugging Reece off the elevator, helping him negotiate the threshold. "It was a police officer from the 47th. He said, _do you know a woman named Charlie? She has your husband's card._ "

Kate took down the address, of course, both of them thinking it was something about that hazy time when he'd disappeared, and together they drove out there with the gumball flashing. Only to find themselves at a grow-house in Manhattan, the residents being carted off in handcuffs towards the waiting NYPD truck.

"Charlie was the woman trying to take care of you boys," Castle says, leaving out the harsher reality. An eleven month old strapped into a battered car carrier, way too big for it and obviously left there day and night - that was Reece, quiet and already conditioned not to cry - that it would do no good. "Charlie had my card, and she wanted me to take you both to a good home."

"So we took you home to _ours_ ," Kate says, smiling back at him over Jake's head. They gather in the lobby to stay out of the cold, waiting on Alexis and Martha to arrive. "Because we loved you so much."

How could they not love these two babies? The three month old Jake, the eleven month old Reece, with no way of telling if they were brothers, or even if they belonged to Charlie. Reece, weak and failing to thrive, was the one Castle picked up from the car seat, his floppy neck horrifying.

Once Rick held him, he pretty much never let him go.

They followed the officers back to the 47th, hung out on the Vice floor soothing those babies and pacing the waiting room for the social worker from Child Services. Kate fed Jake two bottles of formula before the social worker came in with paper work. Because of Cosmo, he and Kate were already in the system as foster parents, and they didn't even need to confer with each other - the decision had already been made.

"You have their bow ties?" Kate says. "Oh, and yours, Rick-"

"In my pocket. Figure that should be last or they'll rip them right off."

The opening of the lobby door has both boys perking up, heads swinging towards the foyer. Martha and Alexis spill through, and the babies shrieking in welcome for their sister and grandmother. The redheads are dressed in silk and silver, velvet and forest green, and it's Alexis who reaches him first, plucking up Reece and kissing him.

"Are you ready, Reece? Ready for the best Christmas ever?"

Castle grins and moves to greet his mother. But Martha waves him off and goes for Jake, the exuberant one, pinching his cheeks and making him squeal.

Kate comes to him instead, sliding her arms around his waist and tucking her head under his chin. Her impressive heels put her even with him, but of course she's always more than even with him, always his equal.

"You ready for this?" he asks, though he knows she is. They both are. It's been a long year of getting DNA tests, trying to find birth parents, and caring for these babies.

"I'm so ready - and so richly blessed." She kisses his jaw. "You give good gifts, Rick Castle."

* * *

Kate supposes no judge has ever seen a family quite like theirs, dressed up to the nines in sparkles and chiffon and tuxedoes - even her little men - with an honor guard of NYPD Blue, and a lawyer who never practices in this building, and a Broadway star who won't stop flirting with him. Plus the older sister with her non-stop camera taking photos and videos of the whole proceeding.

But this is - quintessentially - them.

One brilliant sun-drenched morning, a ribbon of road led to his disappearance, the dissolution of all her dreams for their family. Once he came back, it took pain and work and grief to push forward, together, but the journey has brought them here: this dark and cold Christmas Eve's Eve, sparkling with stars, hands raised before the judge.

Family Court is definitely new for them.

The babies are antsy and shifting on their feet, just old enough to want _down, Mama_ but not old enough to truly understand the monumental importance this night is.

Alexis is taking photos with the Nikon (two of those expensive lenses were their early Christmas gift to her), telling the boys _hey, give me a smile, cutie, that's it_ as she kneels in her dress on the industrial carpet just before the bar, getting shots as they come down the aisle towards the judge.

Kate squeezes the little hand to keep Reece upright and on his feet; he's been the slower of the two, smaller, despite being older. People ask _are they twins_ and Castle usually answers _no only brothers_ in a way that doesn't answer anything at all. _No one's business but ours._

She's stopped feeling the need to explain, and that's how she knows it's time.

Judge Turman adjusts his reading glasses and glances down his nose to them as they approach the railing that separates the bench from the public gallery. He has their official papers in his hands but he's giving them to the court clerk. "Come on through," he says, "into the well. This will be a good picture."

Castle chuckles, his fingers still nervous through the top of Jake's short hair, as if trying to comb it off the boy's face. "Are you sure you don't mind mixing it up with us?" His mother has been highly entertaining to all but perhaps Castle himself.

Judge Turman is already stepping down from the bench and coming around the front. "No, no, this is great. It's not often I'm awarding custody to two parents, let alone at Christmas. This is special. Come on, crowd in, let one of NYPD's finest take the photo. Big sis needs in too."

"Come on, Alexis," Kate says, gesturing. Castle has already picked up Jake to keep him from escaping, holding him on a hip and trying to tug down his tux jacket. The bow tie is obviously irritating the boy's neck, because he keeps plucking at it, wrinkling his nose.

"Da?"

"Yeah, little while longer, kiddo. We want to get family pictures of your Gotcha Day."

Kate's turn to wrinkle her nose; she hates that's what he keeps calling it. "Forever Family," she corrects, tugging on Reece's hand. "Come on, baby, a few more steps and then I'll pick you up too."

His PT says he's doing so well, but she can't help pushing it just a little each day, just a few steps more, nudging his endurance. She bends down and holds out her arms to him, but Reece is momentarily distracted by the puff of her black skirt, the sparkle of those tiny embroidered stars.

"Come on, picture time," she cajoles, calling him forward. Reece gives a little bark of frustration and then comes stumbling into her arms.

She grins, catching him up, smothering him in kisses until he's giggling and hunching in with joy.

Kate rises to her feet and catches Castle watching them, Jake with his fist in his mouth and his head against his now-official father's shoulder. She turns into Castle and leans in, kisses Jakey first, then Rick, a soft touch of lips.

The flash is like fireworks behind her closed eyes, the camera capturing this moment forever.

Adoption day.

No one can take this family away from her.

* * *

They're at the restaurant, rented out of course, their extended family filling groups of tables, all the kids running back and forth and shrieking. Someone gave them candy canes, maybe it was the Ryan kids, but they're all hyped for sure.

Kate is talking with Lanie about their case - neither of them seem to be able to help it - but Castle is keeping an eye on Jake. He finds himself hanging on their every word, though, sliding in comments about arsenic and old lace, just to have Kate roll her eyes at him.

He spots Reece in thick as thieves with Jenny and Kev's youngest boy, while the oldest two Ryans are putting on some kind of production. Dance moves and Sarah Grace is giving a loud talking-to in a stage voice to one of the others. Jenny is hovering close, eating alfredo with one hand as she nurses their newborn, and Kate told him earlier she can honestly say that the sight doesn't pain her. There isn't a lick of jealousy, only joy.

Joy for Jenny and Kevin, joy for Lanie and her baby boy, joy for Espo and his girlfriend's kids whom he has taken in under his wing. All of this - their family has given her such joy that she has no trouble soaking it in, loving it.

He can't imagine a better Christmas than this, his beautiful wife so filled up with joy. She's gorgeous tonight, an extra edge with the red lips and her hair pulled back to have a few curls at her neck. He's about to lean in and kiss her when his phone vibrates in his pocket, so he pauses just to check.

The number has his hands going cold. He stands abruptly and steps away from the tables, waving away Alexis when she moves to follow.

"Hello?"

"Mr Castle? This is Children Services."

* * *

Kate is starting to get worried when Castle finally returns to the party. Alexis takes her hand and squeezes, and she doesn't even know why, only that a phone call is always how things change for them. Change drastically.

A phone call from a state trooper who found the wreck of his car on their wedding day, a phone call in the night-

"Kate?"

The crowd quiets, eyes turning to them. She doesn't let it show on her face, but she feels it, the knot of tension. She doesn't want anything to ruin this night.

"Children Services called."

Her throat closes up.

He winces and rubs a hand down his face. "They're in a bind. An emergency. It's an emergency."

She glances to Reece and Jake, her heart squeezing. "An emergency?"

"There's a girl, a four year old girl. She was just taken out of a bad situation. She needs a home tonight-"

Kate cries out, jumps to her feet. "Oh, God, Castle. You scared me." She wraps her arms around him, squeezing, kisses him. "Of course you said yes. Didn't you? Please tell me you said yes."

He gives a rough breath and chuckles. "I said yes." He breaks from her and shifts to pick up Jakey, who has come running, in tune with her mood. "I wasn't sure you'd be okay with that. We have to meet them at the loft in an hour."

She turns to look at the restaurant brimming with their friends and family, shrugs. "Well, can they drop her off here? She'll need dinner too. And there are a handful of willing mamas. What do you think?"

Castle grins, gives her a rough kiss that pours energy down to her toes, sparkling stars behind her eyelids. "You're the most beautiful woman in the world. I'll call her back, ask her to bring the girl here." He hands off Jake to her, pulling out his phone.

"Wait, what's her name?"

"Lily."

* * *

 _May your holidays be filled with joy,_

 _and may you always find room at the inn._


End file.
